On the Shoulders of Titans

by Andrew Rowe

  Patrick turned back to me, shaking his head. “You’re not a doctor, Corin. And you can’t fix everything in general. If you’d tried, you might have made things worse. And honestly? There was someone who did need you at the time, and I was worried that if you went to help Jin, you’d forget all about her. You always focus on one person at a time. Whoever you feel like you need to save.”

  I winced. He...wasn’t wrong. “You still could have told me.”

  “I could have. And you could have told me about everything with the book and the prisoners in the tower immediately. I just waited a few days. You waited a lot longer.”

  I sighed. I wasn’t good at conversations like this. “Fine, fine. I’ll just....I don’t know.”

  “Talk to him.”

  This time I was the one who looked away. “I don’t know what I’d say. He tried to kill someone.”

  “Sure, because none of us were thinking about the consequences of what we were doing for other countries, including his. I’m not saying I agree with how he did it. I don’t, not in the slightest. But he’s your friend, and you should probably hear him out.”

  “Bah. Fine.” I couldn’t handle this talk anymore. I waved to Patrick. “I’m leaving. Tell the others I’ll be back later if they ask.”

  Patrick returned my wave with his usual enthusisam. “Good luck.”

  I almost laughed. Luck was one of the few things I trusted even less than I trusted my social abilities.

  ***

  Getting my medical check was the easy part.

  “Looks like you’re just fine,” the Mender informed me. “You said you infused your mind with more mana somehow?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. It’s a rare attunement.”

  I could have said restricted, but they didn’t need that much detail. I wasn’t going to be dishonest, either, though. Misleading a doctor could get me false information about my own condition.

  “Sometimes students try to make it through their exams by drinking a bunch of potions with a similar function, and end up causing themselves long-term damage. My advice is to avoid doing it too frequently, and don’t try to push yourself to more than one stage higher in your attunement. As long as you use your attunement sparingly, you should be fine.”

  I gave a gesture of acknowledgement. That was similar to what Researcher had told me. “Thanks.”

  After that, I just finished up my paperwork and payment and such. I felt relieved that I was physically okay, but I was dreading what happened next.

  I asked at the front desk for Jin’s status. They’d finished his surgery a day ago, and he was in a recovery room by himself.

  Unfortunately, visitors were allowed, so I didn’t have an easy excuse to just run back home.

  I knocked on the door to his room. There was a brief pause, then I heard his voice.

  “I’m awake.”

  I opened the door and went inside.

  The room was smaller than one of our dorms, unadorned save for the hospital bed and a nearby table. Jin was sitting up in the bed, holding a book. He was shirtless, but nearly his entire chest was covered with bandages.

  “Corin.”

  I nodded, stepping in and closing the door behind me. “Jin.”

  He closed his book with a crack and set it down on the table next to his bed. “I don’t suppose you’re here to tell me that you’ve finished more of my commissions.”

  I shook my head. “Not this time.”

  The corner of his lips shifted upward, just a fraction. “I don’t suppose you’re delivering me a meal? The food here makes the cafeteria look gourmet.”

  “I hadn’t considered that.”

  Jin chuckled, wincing in the aftermath and moving a hand to his chest. “A shame.”

  I gestured to a chair near his bed. “May I?”

  His expression shifted to stern. “That depends on why you’re here.”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that. “Patrick told me you were here.”

  Jin nodded. “He’s checked in a few times. Loyal, that one.”

  “Saying that for contrast?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Which one of us is the disloyal one?”

  Jin shrugged a shoulder. “I’ve been debating that for a while. Probably both, in our own ways.”

  “You didn’t have to shoot Vera.”

  “Obviously.” He folded his hands. “But I was afraid. I’m still afraid. And I couldn’t count on anyone else to help.”

  I balled my hands into fists. “We could have talked about options.”

  “Like what, exactly? Your solution was to hand everyone over to Katashi. Given time, Vera is probably going to go free, because she cooperated. That probably pleases you, and in Katashi’s mind, it probably passes for ‘justice’. But when she goes back home, she’s going to make more weapons. And someday, those weapons are going to be used to kill thousands of people, maybe more.”

  “Killing Vera wouldn’t have stopped artificial attunement research. They’ve been doing it for decades.”

  “No, but it might have slowed down one particular research branch — the people focused on making artificial god beast attunements. Those terrify me, Corin. And they should terrify you, too. You saw what Mizuchi was capable of; the god beasts themselves are far worse.”

  I had a vivid memory of the damage that Mizuchi had caused, and how close we’d come to being annihilated just by being close enough to be hit by a shockwave from her breath. “You’re right... and that’s what you wanted to happen to Valia.”

  Jin winced. “I didn’t want that, but you’re right — I thought it was the right answer. Katashi might have wiped out the people in Valia who were commissioning those god beasts, and maybe even gone after the people in Caelford, too. It was a messy solution. Not perfect, by any means. My hope would be that Katashi would have shown restraint, and only targeted the people responsible for all this.”

  I tightened my jaw. “We both know Katashi wasn’t in a good frame of mind to show restraint.”

  Jin shrugged. “I suspect he would have if I had a chance to tell him the responsible parties and some more details about what they were working on.”

  I folded my arms. “We didn’t have that much information.”

  Jin turned his head away. “No. You didn’t have that much information. I did.”

  I stared at him for a moment, uncertain.

  When I finally replied, I was furious. “What? What the resh haven’t you been telling me? I thought you weren’t a spy.”

  Jin laughed. “I’m not a spy, Corin. I just did more digging than you did, and I didn’t tell you everything. You certainly haven’t told me everything, either.”

  “When did you possibly have time to do ‘more digging’? And why wouldn’t you tell me?”

  Jin ran a hand through his hair, sighing. “You remember the morning before we went to see Vera? When we got the Jaden Box?”

  I nodded. “Of course.”

  “Remember how I was already at the Divinatory when you arrived?”

  I drew in a breath. “...Yeah?”

  “I’d been there for hours. First, the night before, I learned about Vera and the project designation Q-STN. Researcher wouldn’t help me initially, so I went through files myself. Eventually, she got so frustrated by my inefficiency that she told me she’d send an information request to Alaris Academy for me. When I came back in the morning, it was approved, and she handed over a set of documents.”

  That didn’t make me any happier. “I trusted you to look into that for me while we were in there. And you...”

  “...already had the information, and distracted you with the Jaden Box, which was completely unrelated. Yes.”

  I balled my hands into fists. “Why? What did you find?”

  “Information on the artificial attunement project that Vera was working on. Researcher still wouldn’t give me everything, but there was enough in there to form an ugly picture. The most relevant portion? Vera was not just an Analyst,
or a mere participant in the project. She was the director for the entire ‘god beast attunement’ project. There was someone above her in charge of artificial attunements in general, but Vera had a critical role.”

  “That still doesn’t justify trying to murder her. Even a project director can be replaced.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not finished. They took some sensible precautions when working on those attunements, with the knowledge that giving children power that could eventually grow to god beast levels was tremendously dangerous.”

  Jin took a breath. “One of those precautions was a set of control sigils built into the artificial attunements – and linked directly to unique marks on the project director. Much how a return bell has an anchor, these marks were inexorably intertwined. To prevent anyone else from accessing the control seals, a part of Vera’s mana was stored inside the artificial attunements on the children. If a control command came from anyone else, it wouldn’t work.”

  I processed that. “You’re saying that Vera had a means of controlling any one of these artificial attuned, like Orden controlled Derek?”

  “Precisely. This is, I believe, why she was so important to everyone. Not just her knowledge, but because she is the key to controlling the existing attuned. They could make more, but it took several years to get a viable test case. My hope was that if I removed Vera from the equation, the intervening years would be enough time for Katashi to shut down the projects entirely.”

  “Why wouldn’t you have told me something that important? I might have...”

  “Your mother is one of the people who approved testing Echion’s abilities in the Serpent Spire.”

  I stopped and stared. “What?”

  “Laura Lyran was on the list, along with several other city council members. And no, I don’t know your mother’s name because of any sort of spying. Sera mentioned ‘Lady Lyran’ in conversation, and I connected her with the council member that you and I saw in the memory crystal with Keras. I judged that you would be less likely to cooperate in anything that might lead Katashi to take steps against your mother.”

  I glowered at him. “You were going to point Katashi toward potentially killing my mother?”

  “I don’t think he would have taken such an extreme step against someone who simply signed the paperwork on the Valia side for running the tests. But I did anticipate you having this reaction, which is why I didn’t tell you about what I’d learned. I could have omitted part of it – like that your mother was involved – but if I’d told you the beginning portion, you might have dragged the rest of it out of Researcher yourself. And then you very likely would have abandoned the whole mission.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just settled for angry. “You lied to me.”

  “Mostly in terms of omission, but yes. But in fairness, Vera lied to you, too. First when you were in the jail cell, then later when we—”

  I cut him off. “I don’t care about Vera. You manipulated me toward taking steps that could have resulted in harming my mother.”

  “I’m sorry for that. But I still believe I did the right thing. You would not have responded rationally, and there was too much at stake.”

  “I was relying on you.” I took a step closer, my hand still balled.

  Jin pulled away, alarmed. “I truly am sorry, Corin...”

  “I don’t care if you’re sorry, Jin. That’s not good enough.”

  “Let me make it up to you, then. Please.” His voice was pleading.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Did you even consider what would happen to those children with the attunements if you’d done things your way?”

  Jin nodded slowly. “Even if Katashi killed them, which I doubt, it would be better than letting them be used as weapons of war. And if you have any doubt that is what they would have been used for, you’re deluding yourself.”

  “You could have told me this. I would have listened to you. We could have—”

  “You know that isn’t true. Your family means everything to you. That’s been clear to me from the start.”

  He...wasn’t wrong.

  What would I have done if Jin had told me all of this in advance?

  Would I have cooperated with him and tried to assassinate Vera, just to prevent the possibility that she would go free?

  No, I told myself. I wouldn’t have taken that route. I still wouldn’t have been willing to kill her, or to risk my mother.

  Which meant that to a degree, what Jin was saying was true. I wouldn’t have gone his way.

  But could we have found another option, a third road if we’d worked together?

  Maybe.

  I couldn’t know.

  And for the moment, I was too angry to properly consider it.

  I unclenched my fist, turning and heading back toward the door. “I’m leaving.”

  Jin’s voice was faint, pained. “I really am sorry, Corin. But I when I think about the damage those god beast attuned could have done—”

  I turned my head, shooting him one final glare. “You’ve made your point.”

  It wasn’t deliberate, but I slammed the door on the way out.

  ***

  I was still fuming as I fled the hospital quickly after that. I didn’t know what to think about what Jin had said. Was I automatically negatively disposed toward any sort of plan that involved shooting an unconscious woman in the back?

  Probably.

  Was I being irrational, because the plan he mentioned would have risked my own mother?

  Almost certainly.

  Did that mean that I was wrong, and that Jin’s plan was right?

  Not necessarily.

  Jin may have accurately predicted certain elements of my reasoning, but I still thought — or maybe just hoped — that he simply hadn’t given me enough credit. That I would have found a way to use the information and come up with a better plan.

  When is using lethal force acceptable?

  I wasn’t so innocent that I believed there was always a diplomatic solution to every situation.

  The problem was determining when and where the optimal solution was to take the irreversible step of removing someone from the world. And for someone who preferred peaceful solutions, I knew I wasn’t particularly great at reading people.

  That was a critical flaw, and there was no easy solution to it.

  Magic could give me shortcuts that might help in the future. I could try to learn things like spells for detecting if someone was speaking the truth, or even to try to control someone, if I decided that was more moral — or more effective — than physical violence.

  But no magic I knew of could tell me the result of my actions. People had been trying to divine the future with magic since it was first discovered, and the results were always unreliable at best.

  So, no matter what method I used to try to solve a problem, I’d never know if I’d picked the right answer. And if I picked fighting against my friends, like I had with Jin?

  I’d always have to wrestle with wondering if I was right.

  I really, truly hoped that I wouldn’t have to make a decision like that with Tristan.

  Chapter XI – A Persistent Hatred for Colored Square Puzzles

  I spent the rest of that day studying alone and trying to get invasive thoughts out of my mind. I had too many doubts about Jin, about Patrick, and about my own priorities in life in general.

  On the positive side, I finally found the time to start really digging into foreign attunements. I stopped when I found something that sounded fascinating.

  The Juggernaut attunement utilizes transference mana to create powerful bursts of kinetic energy, allowing the user to move rapidly around the battlefield. Their specialization is converting their shroud into transference mana, which they can use to deflect physical attacks and smash through obstacles. This is difficult to maintain for long periods of time, so Juggernauts generally only shift their shroud for a few moments at a time.

 
; The first part was how I was trying to use the ring of jumping already...and the second idea was very appealing. Most attunements had limited defense against physical attacks, and deflecting them with transference mana sounded like a perfect solution that might be possible with my own skill set.

  I wasn’t sure if it would be possible to convert my shroud at my attunement level, though. Shroud manipulation was a Sunstone level ability for most attunements...but I already knew there were exceptions, like Guardians.

  Maybe having two different Carnelian attunements that both generated transference mana would be enough to let me accomplish the same thing?

  There was only one way to find out.

  I activated my Enchanter attunement to get a better sense of the mana flowing within my body, as well as the two shrouds around it. I could sense the mana inside my body easily enough, but the shroud was more or less invisible to me without my attunement active.

  That was a key problem. I couldn’t feel the mana from my shroud in the same way I felt the mana within my body, and that meant I couldn’t just mentally command it to change into another mana type like I would with my internal mana supply.

  Maybe that was the key difference between a Carnelian and a Sunstone — would I be able to sense my shroud as if it was part of my own body at that stage? That was an appealing prospect; it would make tricks like this much easier.

  In the meantime, I needed to find a workaround.

  The first way I tried to experiment was converting some of my mana from gray into transference, and then trying to push it out of my body, hoping it would mix with the shroud.

  It didn’t; the transference mana just dissipated into the air.

  I wasn’t surprised by the result, but I was a little disappointed.

  What else could I do?

  I remembered what Keras had said about his own shroud, which wasn’t gray mana. That was because a shroud was a result of the body leaking out excess mana...meaning that if my excess mana was a different type than gray, theoretically the shroud would be the same.

  Could I convert so much of my body’s mana into transference mana that I was emitting a different type of aura?