NOVEL NEXT 111 - Beatrayal[sic]
"I think you're not thinking clearly," Beatrice said.
"What do you mean?" Archmund said.
"I mean, mayonnaise? It's a novelty. Maybe the reason no one came up with it for thousands of years was because no one needed it."
"I mean—sure, but it's a metaphor."
"So you're telling me that because eggs are expensive for peasants, you don't want me doing anything but manual labor in the Dungeon?"
"My point is that mayonnaise is only viable for wide distribution across the population when supply chains for eggs and oil exist, and the knowledge is common."
"Why would a luxury like that ever end up in wide distribution?"
He seemed at a genuine loss for words, which was a first. He was always so smug and cocky that it was weird seeing him on the back foot for once.
"You're completely not getting it."
"Can you just tell it to me straight instead of wrapping it in a weird metaphor then?"
And he did in a mildly obnoxious way that suggested he was still hiding a whole damn lot.
"The circumstances of the Dungeon only exist because of all the hard work I've done. The only reason any of us can be here and harvest Gems from Monsters so safely without any element of risk is because of everything I've done to make it possible."
She wanted to retort that didn't mean he could hang on to power forever, but found herself at a loss for words. She didn't even think he was applying Influence to her.
Nobody climbed the road to success from nothing. There were always people who had come before.
"You can take everything I've done and just copy me," he said. "But that doesn't mean you can step into my shoes and take over from me outright. You might think you can handle the power and experimentation on your own, but you don't have the background I do."
"We're cousins! What background?"
He gave her a look, sorrowful and mysterious and full of something unknowable that suggested he was hiding stuff she couldn't even begin to imagine.
"Seriously, what are you so afraid of? Sure, Dungeons run out eventually, in ten or fifteen years! What would be the harm of letting me try to do a fraction of what you're capable of?"
He sighed deeply.
"Yeah. I get it. You think I'm not good enough," Beatrice said. She'd heard it her whole life.
"I didn't say that," Archmund said, now in a furious backpedal.
"It's true, though, isn't it? If I had your resources, if a Dungeon had opened up in Blackstone, odds are I wouldn't have done what you did."
"Well. You might've been better off for it."
And now he was gloomy and brooding.
Seriously, what was up with him?
Archmund really hoped he hadn't given too much away. The nature of the Gemstone Tablet. His reincarnation. Maybe invoking mayonnaise had been too much, honestly — he'd gone deep into the abstract with that, and he'd had to literally state what he'd meant in plain terms, but then again that meant she hadn't guessed anything, surely.
But it was all true. Beatrice wasn't at his level. Maybe if she was, he could hand over this Dungeon to her and focus on what was important, improving the lives of his people so he didn't feel any remaining noblesse oblige towards them and then go and live a comfortable life of his own.
"You said you faced Aunt Sophia down here," Beatrice said.
"What?" He hadn't thought she'd been paying attention during that dinner. Was she being sensitive to his feelings or something? That was a weird thought.
"Did you just see her, or did you… talk to her?"
"I don't see why this matters for your duties."
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"If it was just a ghost mimicking her face, it would've spooked you, but you wouldn't have cried like that at the dinner table. Unless you're a much better actor than you seem."
He turned his face away from her. Truthfully, he'd spent a few years doing community theater in his past life, but he'd never amounted to much as an actor.
"Please, she's my family too," Beatrice said.
What would be the harm of telling her? He'd banished her fully, stabbed the monster mimicking his mother's face over and over and over again until she was nothing again. He could spare a word for his cousin.
"She wanted to be with us again," he said.
"All ghosts say that. They want to return to the living world. That's their whole thing. You gotta judge them by their actions. What did she actually do?"
"She offered to be a family again," Archmund said. "My dead siblings and her and father, all together. And she offered me the power to take the world, to command the legions of the formless dead as their king. All the dead taking any form I commanded. And then, once the time was right, to take all under heaven as my own."
Beatrice was silent for a long moment. A long, long moment.
"You've been gathering Gems to be more powerful," she said. "Figuring out how to best manipulate the forms of Gems or Gear that you extract. Any form."
"I have. Do you think you'd be able to do the same?"
"And you've been able to issue commands to the dead through this office and whatever you have on your desk."
"Uh huh."
The unifying factor was the Gemstone Tablet, but she didn't need to know that. Tablet computers were devastating to the attention spans of the young.
"How powerful do you think you'll be by the end of this?"
"Enough to bust through to achieve another Awakening."
Beatrice's eyes widened. "That's absurd. It's absurd enough that you've already achieved an Awakening and it only took you a hundred days, but another one? You'd have to be an insane prodigy to pull that off."
Somehow he suspected he wouldn't have a problem with that.
"The good point is that you don't seem to have an insidious voice whispering in your ear telling you that everything you're doing is right and what you've always wanted."
"Good job not telling her about me!" Gemmy chimed.
"What are you getting at?" Archmund said.
"You don't see any similarities between what she offered you and what you're doing now?"
"To what, exactly?"
"Taking the dead and turning them into whatever Gems you can dream of — whatever form you command. Building exorbitant wealth. Making weapons that could give you the world."
That had nothing in common with this.
"Beatrice."
"What?"
"Look, I'm going to accept that you don't have a full grasp of the bigger picture. But that was out of line."
She scowled at him. How dare she?
"I mean, look at you. Sitting here, messing with Monsters, having Rory and I hunt down creatures and get our hands dirty. Do you even care that Gelias is gone? Are you going to get your maid treatment?"
"They're fine. They're self-sufficient. She's going to survive!" Archmund shouted back, surprised that his voice was loud. He composed himself.
Garth had told him to rely more on other people. Well, he was. Gelias and Mary could handle themselves. They didn't need him.
And he didn't need this.
Nice. Be nice. Talk nice.
"You're my cousin, and I respect that. We're alike in many ways. I see my virtues in you, but I also see my flaws. If you're not dedicated to the mission…"
"What?"
"I have a vision, Beatrice."
"One that you haven't shared?"
"A vision of a better world for all of us. Is that so hard to accept?"
There was of course a place for her in that vision. Family always had a place in the great game of noble houses. The long feud (that he barely knew about) between the Blackstone and Granavale houses would be settled, ideally in his favor, but that didn't mean he would cast her out entirely. She would simply reap the benefits of his victories out of the grace and charity of his heart.
"I… do you hear yourself?" she said.
It wouldn't be the most amicable parting, but that didn't mean she wouldn't be useful in the future. Besides, she was his cousin — and eventually, once he came back up to the surface world the immense wealth to restore his House, she would forgive him. She would beg for the chance to.
"I guess that means you're not interested."
"You can't make me go," she said. "In fact, I'm even more certain that you can't be allowed to have all this power for yourself. Listen to yourself!"
She was definitely crossing the line.
"I can! I will! I have!"
She pulled up her Shadowed Cloak, dark particles swirling into existence, forming into a dusty armor around her. She lunged across the table. He dodged, but she hadn't been going for him . She reached for his Gemstone Tablet — and then she would see.
"Stop!" he shouted desperately.
His voice resonated with the empty halls of the Dungeon, vibrating through the magic channels that ran throughout, resounding against the structural hierarchy that governed their roles — and it struck her, as if rooting her in her place. Even as her Shadowed Cloak buffeted against his magical command, her Gemstone Keycard let his power seep into her spirit.
He reached for the Diamond Hand, and it jumped into his own. That gave those who wielded it the power to manipulate space, at least within the Dungeon, and he created a gate — a perfect circle cut into the fabric of space.
He wouldn't have felt confident using it before, but with the new guidance of the Gemstone Tablet and Gemmy he was sure this would be safe.
His power rushed, untamed, bidden by his rage, from his Ruby Octahedron, rimming the portal with a ring of fire. His Gemstone Cufflinks hummed in resonance with the rhythms of the Dungeon itself, as if they were the puppet strings from which he held the whole Dungeon, able to exile her to the furthest reaches.
Together, that made the Power to Fire.
"When did you learn that?" she said, her voice filled with fear.
He would leave her alive. That was never in question. It was never a good idea to burn bridges that you didn't need to burn.
And he would be merciful. His power was still worming its way towards the outer world, so he couldn't kick her out entirely, but he could dump her in the Upper Subtier of Tier 2.
After all, she couldn't stay.
"Beatrice?" he said.
She glared at him. Defiant? Terrified? It didn't matter. This was just business.
"You're fired."
And the portal swept over her, sending her away.