by Skyler Grant
Cobalt shot me a look. It was speculative and faintly approving. Did I usually grovel at feet or something? This seemed way too interesting for too many people.
Still, I was just a bit player in this particular scene.
"You're family?" Maria asked, a little hopeful and sad at the same time. There was something fragile in Maria when it came to her family. I guess growing up without one will do that to a girl.
"You should return with me," Malachite said. "You can meet the rest of your relatives."
"No," Cobalt said.
"Okay," Maria said.
Malachite beamed a smile at Maria and looked back to Cobalt. "It's about time you returned. I've been waiting a month."
"I'll have to restock the wine reserve then," Cobalt said, her voice not having lost any of its edge. "Why are you here?"
"It's Lapis, she has gone missing," Malachite said.
Cobalt's demeanor shifted at once, the hostility dropping away.
"How long?" Cobalt asked.
"It's been three years. You know it shouldn't take that long. She should have been back by now. I was hoping she'd been in touch with you," Malachite said.
"Who is Lapis?" Maria asked.
"And why are you all named after gemstones?" I asked.
"Don't be ridiculous. Obviously the gemstones are named after us," Malachite said, as if the question offended her. "Besides Cobalt isn't even a gem, just a common metal."
Cobalt told Maria, "Lapis is another of your aunts, younger than you are. Her trial shouldn't have taken more than a year."
"Trial?" Maria asked.
"Have you not taught her anything?" Malachite asked.
"She got caught behind a magic shield and raised by spiders for a few centuries. We're still catching up," Cobalt said.
Malachite winced. "And my children call me a bad mother."
"Mine wins," Maria said.
"Ours wins," Cobalt and Malachite said in unison and gave each other wry looks.
"I haven't seen her, Mal. But I'll check my dead drops in case she's been in contact," Cobalt said.
"Good," Malachite said. "I'd stay and make small talk, but I've been in this cesspit of a world quite long enough. Are you coming along, Maria?"
"You don't know what you're getting into," Cobalt said.
"I deserve to know my family," Maria said.
"However pretty they smile, remember that they're predators," Cobalt said.
"Your mother says the nicest things," Malachite said, beaming a smile. "She's quite correct, of course. We're the worst people you'll ever meet. You'll hate us."
Malachite took Maria's arms, not seeming to mind the spiders in the least, and with a shimmer the pair blinked out of existence.
"Neat trick that. She doesn't need a ship with a dimensional drive?" I said.
"Malachite has the Right of Worship and the Right of Travel. Goes anywhere she wants and has people throw themselves at her feet declaring her their Goddess when she gets there," Cobalt said wearily.
"She seemed surprised I didn't," I said.
"I'm surprised you didn't. Malachite has one hell of an aura. You're toughening up from the Crucible Shard, but you still shouldn't have the juice to resist one of us," Cobalt said, frowning.
"I'm not handing my Kingdom over to Maria either," I said
"Maria hasn't done her trial. It's a thing we do, throwing ourselves against the universe and winning. Until we do, we don't come fully into our power."
"That is the trial your sister disappeared in?" I asked.
"Yeah. That would be the one. I need to find her."
"Anything we can do to help?"
Cobalt shook her head. "I don't think so, but I am going to need to leave you to do your own thing for awhile. I know you're still working out a few things after that excess of truth, Lea, but do you mind taking over as Captain of the Vainglory for the time being?"
"I can do that," Lea said.
"You're not at full strength," I said to Cobalt.
"Don't you dare try to tell me what I can or cannot do, Liam."
I raised my hands. "I'm just concerned."
"I know my limits," Cobalt said. I didn't really believe that, but it wasn't something I felt I could push any more right now.
"You've got three months," Lea said. "Any longer than that and the Vainglory is coming to find you."
Cobalt looked like she might protest for a moment, but did her own bit of deciding where to draw the line and nodded. "Fine. Liam, when you see my sister again, don't fuck her."
"Why would I see your sister again?"
"Because, believe it or not, having men endlessly groveling at your feet gets a little old—for them. Her dating pool is kind of limited," Cobalt said.
What high bars I managed to pass.
Cobalt hugged Ashley, then kissed me, Lea, and Riggs before making her way off the ship. She didn't even bother to collect any things. I suppose when you traveled as much as she did, you got used to moving light.
"So, back to where we left?" I asked.
"Not yet. I want to give the killer steam time to dissipate. Seems weird to hang around here, though. Did you guys want to check back with your home plane?" Lea asked.
That was a question hard to answer. Cobalt advised against it. I glanced over to Ashley. "Do we?"
"I know that whether we are real or not is one of those questions we aren't supposed to actually want answered, but I really do," Ashley said.
"I find that acceptable," Walt said.
"We seem in agreement. Take us to our home, if you can find it," I said.
"I can take you anywhere you want to go. Cobalt may talk quite the game, but she isn't half the pilot I am," Lea said.
Lea's runes flared blue as her magic connected to the ship. Around us reality began to distort and bend.
We materialized. Beneath us was a city, not nearly so beautiful as the one we had just left. I couldn't tell if this was our reality or not. I'd never been to the city, and for all that we followed the games broadcast from it, that was little help with identifying any buildings.
"Ashley?" I asked.
"This is it," Ashley said.
Pain suddenly gripped my body and I collapsed to the deck, clutching my head. The same thing was happening to Walt and Ashley.
My vision alternated. I was on the deck of a ship—then I was in a pod and looking out through a tiny window at a basement of some kind.
It felt like I was being torn in half. It was agonizing.
"Hold on, Love. I should have protested coming back here, but I wanted to see as badly as you did. It's not going well," Yvera said.
I couldn't even get my thoughts together to give her a proper answer. Before I could manage it another surge of pain overwhelmed me and I felt consciousness slipping away.
The world became a series of disconnected colors and sounds. It was as if the world was there, but not quite in any way that my mind could grasp. Nothing made sense, nothing had meaning.
Even time had no substance. It was like being totally disconnected from everything. Then abruptly I was no longer alone.
Malachite was there, arm in arm with Mellaise, Atlantia's daughter.
"Surprise seeing you two here, wherever here is," I said. Our surroundings still made no sense. Colors I couldn't name and shapes I couldn't define drifted endlessly in a void. I had a body now though—I don't think I had before.
"Yeah. Your friends panicked when you caused a full-on dysfunction in reality," Malachite said, glancing around with a frown. "Coming here was really stupid."
"I don't even know where here is. We were trying to get home," I said.
"It's not very nice, but at least your Goddess isn't here," Mellaise said.
"Why isn't she? Yvera should be able to get to me anywhere."
Malachite shook her head. "It's stupid to take you traveling without giving you cosmology lessons. My sister really didn't tell you a thing?"
"She said it was probably a bad i
dea to come here," I said. "She thought we might split in two, or combine into one. Not whatever is happening here."
"Your friends had one hell of a bout of nausea and a few tiny seizures. They're fine, by the way. You're another matter, but we'll fix things," Malachite said.
"What is there to fix? I really didn't do anything but show up here," I said. "And where did you even come from?"
"It's been a few days. You broke reality in a big way and so got shoved off far into the middle of nowhere. That requires the Right of Travel to get to you, and Lea isn't a fool," Malachite said.
That explained her. Mellaise was an altogether different mystery. I loved the Siren, of course. I always would. I was well aware that it was mind-control, it didn't matter.
"And Mellaise?" I asked.
"We're going to have to break you a little bit to get you well. She can do that," Malachite said.
Fair enough.
"Do what you need to do then," I said.
Malachite nodded. "First, let me explain why we need to do it just in case you're hiding any other conflicts. Reality doesn't tend to care about minor glitches, it just overwrites them and makes them right. Paradox is less destructive than you might imagine, most people just aren't important enough for reality to give a damn. It looked at your friends and shrugged, but you got a different reaction."
"I'm that important?"
Malachite shrugged. "Probably not very, but just enough. A pebble caught in the gears, putting the reality you were in under some strain, so it threw you somewhere else."
"Hell of a place," I said with a look around. It hurt my eyes, the sheer indefinable nature of it all.
"Raw stuff. You can make worlds out of it," Malachite said and then added, "Well. Not you of course, but your betters."
"Thanks. Good to be appreciated."
"I like you enough anyways," Mellaise said. Well good, I had someone’s support.
Malachite folded her arms and stared me down. "So, let's define your paradoxes. My understanding is there are two related to you. The first, you existed simultaneously in two different realities via projection to a construct. In the process this construct became more defined than the original."
That was one way to put it. It fit what I knew about things at least.
"That's right, although the same thing happened to the others," I said.
"You've got more heft to you than any of them. Have you had more interactions with my family?" Malachite asked. She read my expression and rolled her eyes. "One of them or both of them?"
"Really not your business," I said.
"Tell her," Mellaise said. The words were simply delivered, but they were irresistible. That's what Sirens can do.
"Both. Does that make a difference?" I asked.
"Not usually, but we're nothing comparable to anything else you've ever met. Sometimes those people or things we form attachments to can become more important than they've any right to be," Malachite said.
"Guess we're not going on any dates then. Cobalt implied you were a little desperate," I said.
"Did she?" Malachite said flatly. "Second paradox. You have the memory of a second branching time-line relayed through some sort of second-rate Goddess in your head present in both."
Mellaise snickered. There was no love lost between her and Yvera.
"I do. One of my companions quite changed herself. I have the memories of both time-lines floating around in my head. It can get a little confusing."
"Any other major paradoxes you can think of that might be affecting you, but not your companions?"
They all had Goddesses in their heads now, so it wasn't Yvera. Yvera was the only one that started someplace other than the Crucible Shard though. I didn't think it mattered, but it was best to be thorough.
"My Goddess is an artificial intelligence from the same world as me. She enhanced her own reality, just as I've been enhancing my own. She exists as a divine presence in my head in one, and nanite-encoded programming in the other," I said.
Malachite asked, "Any unexpected silences from her lately?"
I thought about it for a moment, "A few times. We went into a reality where she manifested as human. At one point she was captured in the Crucible Shard and despite my nanites I couldn't hear her."
"You're a lot more of a mess than you look. All kinds of pieces tacked on where they shouldn't be. No wonder reality locked up," Malachite said.
"But you can help, right? You said you could."
Malachite said, "Usually these types of conflicts are internal, you just don't know which you is real. I brought the Siren along to command you into sloughing off the useless bits. I don't think that is going to work in your case."
"So, what will?" I asked.
Malachite smiled sadly. "We're going to have to patch things a little more and pretend it's a fix. But first, Siren, as we discussed."
I glanced at Mellaise curiously and she gave me a smile back.
Mellaise said, "Sorry about this, Liam. But when a Goddess like her commands, I listen. From this moment on, you will love her as much as you love me, although you don't have to obey her in the same way. You can't keep any secrets from her though."
Well, of course I loved Malachite. I knew she must love me as well, why else would she come all the way here to save me? These two women were amazing and I was lucky to have them in my life. I knew I was being mentally manipulated, of course, but it made no difference. I did find it odd though that Mellaise's control worked on me, while I didn't have to worship Malachite—yet Malachite clearly controlled Mellaise.
"So, did that actually work?" Malachite asked.
"It worked. There aren't really any special effects when I do my thing," Mellaise said.
"Are you sure? Because when I do my thing there are usually all sorts of groveling," Malachite said.
"Liam, will you please kiss the divine one so she knows I'm not full of it," Mellaise said.
I could do that. I wanted to do that. I closed the distance to Malachite in a few strides and slipped my arm around her waist as my lips sought out hers. The kiss was a surprise, but after a moment deep and surprisingly awkward. She really didn't have much practice at having to please anyone else.
"That worked then," Malachite said, after breaking off the kiss and sounding pleased about it. "And you're not totally under my control?"
"I love you, but it's just that," I said, giving her a wry smile. "A little complicated, because I know it's her getting into my head, but totally real. Love doesn't mean uncompromising obedience or anything, I'm still me. Is it not like that with your power?"
"I become a person's Goddess. You have one, you know how that sort of relationship tends to go. It's not the same thing." She changed the subject. "I know my sister well enough to see that she was keeping something from me, what was it?" Malachite asked.
Right. She might find me interesting, but I was of secondary interest to her family’s politics. I didn't want to tell her, but here I didn't have a choice.
"She's carrying my child. It's early yet, but the child will have the Right of War from her mother and the Right of Rule from me," I said.
Malachite looked startled—and concerned. I'd expected the secret to please her, but it seemed to have done anything but.
"Keep him from revealing this secret under any other sort of mental coercion," Malachite ordered Mellaise.
"Nobody else will be able to manipulate this secret out of you," Mellaise said. The words rippled through me and latched.
"Cobalt is very worried about it," I said.
"She should be," Malachite said. "You don't understand our family. I'm not a good person, Liam. You'll be quite horrified by how awful a person I am, and yet I pale in comparison to others of the blood. That combination in your child could pose a threat to our mother."
Malachite slipped out of my arm and began to pace. It was a strange sight when there was absolutely nothing for her to walk upon.
"If she is so terrified of having
this child, why doesn't she just get rid of it?" Mellaise asked.
"It isn't so simple as that," Malachite said, with a sharp shake of her head, "I wish it were. A child of the blood is not a leaf falling from a tree to be brushed aside, it is a thousand moons falling from orbit to shatter the world beneath. Once set in motion there is inevitability to events."
What an alarming way to describe my kid.
"So, you're terrified of your mother?" I asked.
Malachite was clearly agitated. "Well, of course I am terrified of my mother. There are within this universe worlds that have been silent for millennia. Entire planets that have gone silent simply in the hopes that she might forget they exist."
Right. So much love in this family.
"So why do you care? You two don't exactly seem to get along," I said.
Malachite let out weary sigh. "Obviously we don't, but that doesn't mean we are enemies. I do not approve of my sister and she does not approve of me, but that does not mean I wish harm to befall her. As is her nature, she is bringing a war to us. Is she planning to make a fight of things?"
Again, I thought this was information probably best kept to myself—and again I couldn't. I couldn't keep secrets from this woman, not anymore.
"I don't know exactly how, but yes, of course she's making a fight of it."
"Of course, she is," Malachite said, massaging her eyes. "Okay, enough of that. This is the deal, I can't fix the problem you've got. The best thing to do is just to take you away from here, give you room to grow, and I figure you'll split from your second form in time, as will that Goddess of yours."
"She is having a problem too?" I asked.
"What part of what I explained earlier don't you understand? You are gaining reality from your adventures in a denser bit of reality, the same has to be happening to her," Malachite said.
When she put it like that it all seemed obvious. It also explained a lot. When Yvera was going silent, it was because the Goddess version of her was silenced and I wasn't hearing the computer version. I was growing apart from that aspect of myself, and that aspect of her.
"Will I ever be able to go back home?" I asked.