NOVEL NEXT 113 - Rory is doing great and loves this adventure!
"At what cost? Presumably he'd pay us with Gems, wouldn't he?" Beatrice said.
He gave her a look.
"You meant it metaphorically, didn't you."
"Could you imagine it? An Agraria, reshaped in the image of Archmund Granavale — but not the Archmund Granavale who plays tricks on his friends and dedicates himself to personal development, the Archmund Granavale who treats the spirits of the dead as feed for a machine of transmutation."
"No, Gelias, I can't imagine that. An Agraria in the image of an Archmund Granavale who beats up little girls and shoves them into the mud," Beatrice said. But she paused. Something scratched at the back of her skull, something nagging her. "I don't want to imagine that. But it doesn't sound good."
"You've been through a lot, Beatrice," Gelias muttered. "Clear your head. Calm yourself. Once your mind is at peace, we can discuss what must be done."
"I just hope Rory's doing okay," Beatrice said, as she sank to the ground.
Rory was doing great!
The Gem of Mental Fortification was brand-new to his spirit, but already he was feeling improvements. His head was clearer, his thoughts less frenetic. Instead of swinging wildly at the Monsters spawning from the pools, instead of battering them as soon as they appeared, he could wait until they came to him and strike them down with a single blow.
They were no threat at all. He just had to follow the instructions.
He wondered how Beatrice was holding up without him. She was a rebel if there ever was one.
He wondered if Mary was okay. She had not looked well.
But he trusted Archmund.
For good or ill, he trusted Archmund.
Archmund was… territorial. Rory knew that better than most. He'd been on the end of a crazed and vicious beating from Archmund, his limbs driven into a whirlwind frenzy by magic. But Archmund treated Mary with the sort of boundary-blending that Rory had seen elsewhere only in the elders of the Redmont and Blackstone families. One was, arguably and indubitably, subordinate to the other, and yet the superior treated the subordinate with far more intimacy and grace than the other.
It defied logical understanding, but Rory was certain that Archmund would defend Mary's life with as much force as he could muster. Beatrice had seen that too, and performed an ill-formed plan to taunt Mary into getting too comfortable with Beatrice so she would do something above her station and then Beatrice could demand recompense from House Granavale and…
He didn't remember the full details because it seemed like a dumb plan that he'd wanted nothing to do with.
The point was, Archmund could be abrasive. He could be aggressive. He could be an asshole. But he cared about "his" people. He'd cried at the funeral for those who had fallen in defense of Granavale, taken the burden of their lost lives hard. He wasn't some cruel slavedriver drawing all the labor he could from his peons.
So why did this current job rub Rory the wrong way?
Really, it almost felt like a betrayal to consider this line of thought. They'd had a rough first meeting, but in the months since, Archmund had done so much for Rory. He'd hosted Rory in Granavale Manor for the season, with full room and board, and lent him the expertise of all his tutors and trainers. He'd given him a fair shot at looting his own materials from the Dungeon to enrich his own lands, even if he did take taxes. And then, to dispel all rumors of greed, Archmund had granted him a Gem of Mental Fortitude, easily the cost of a small estate, even though he'd greedily kept the Gemstone Rapiers for his own people. Which, in the balance, was more than fair.
Archmund was confusing. And yet it seemed that he cared about people.
Care that didn't extend to the dead.
Something was rubbing him the wrong way, something that hadn't quite settled when his Gemstone Keycard hummed again.
[Don't be alarmed. Opening doorway.]
A disk, rimmed with cerulean light, dilated open in front of him. Archmund was standing in his office on the other side.
"Come on in," he said. "I figured I could save you the trouble of walking all the way back up here."
Rory stepped through. It was marvelous. One moment, he was in one place, and the next, he was in another. It was smoother than a carriage ride, as easy as walking through a doorway.
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"How's the Gem working for you?" Archmund said, as he made his way back to his desk.
"Pretty swell," Rory said. "It helps me stay calm."
Archmund raised an eyebrow. "You need help staying calm?"
Rory understood how people saw him. He seemed calm, cool, and collected from the outside. But that was because he preferred to make problems go away before they became issues. If all of his problems were taken care of, he could be of service to others. And in being of service to others, his own worries would be soothed away.
"You've always struck me as the life of the party, Rory. The heart that ties a team together."
"We haven't really been working as a team for… a while, though," Rory said. "How long has it been?"
Archmund frowned. "Even if we're not working in the same place, we're still working together. You're an integral part of this operation. Can't have been more than a few hours, surely. And "
"Feels longer," Rory said. "How's everyone else holding up?"
Archmund's jaw tensed. He might not have meant to show it, but he did.
"Mary is still recovering, and I still can't get a hold of Gelias."
"And Beatrice…?"
Archmund didn't answer. Rory's blood ran cold.
"Did something happen to Beatrice?"
Of course something would happen to her. She was practically helpless, no matter how good she was. She always did like 90% of the work to become great, but the last 10% would always have some detail that would be her downfall. Without others to catch her, she stumbled and fell so often.
And he hadn't been there for her.
"Nothing happened," Archmund snapped. "She's fine. She's just… not working with us on this project anymore."
"Why not?"
He seemed to work his jaw. "We had a disagreement, so we decided to part ways. Right now, she should be back in the Upper Subtier. If she apologizes, I might consider bringing her back on, but if she decides against it she'll be more than capable of making her way back up."
Rory frowned. He was torn between his loyalty to Beatrice and his trust of Archmund (though he was vaguely aware that said trust was stronger than he would have expected, for a month's friendship to be equally balanced against almost a decade). He had to learn more about whatever it was Archmund was saying. He had to figure out what had actually happened between the two of them.
"What sort of disagreement?"
"I'd rather not talk about it," Archmund said.
Rory could respect that, but he still fell back upon the urge to mediate.
"Well, don't forget, Beatrice can be disagreeable at times. I hope you didn't say anything you'll regret."
Archmund smiled, his expression pained. "I doubt that. I regret very little these days."
There was something more there, but Rory had some matters to handle. He turned out his pockets of Gems.
"All of the Gems, as you ordered."
The Gems remained dull, unanimated by Rory's magic, but Archmund's desk seemed to pull information about them anyways. Archmund tilted his head, as if listening to a distant voice.
"I've been wondering," Rory said. "Do the dead dream?"
"Dream. No, probably not," Archmund said, surprised.
"Not dream, but think. Imagine. Want," Rory said. He wasn't particularly well-versed on what made something "alive". In his short life, he hadn't exactly been interested in philosophy.
"They want for sure," Archmund said. "That's all they are. Want, unshaped by any other thoughts and structures. All they do is want."
"What about when they have tactics or use Enchantments?" Rory asked. "Doesn't that mean they're thinking?"
Archmund opened and closed his mouth, then his jaw tensed. "No. Not at all."
"Are you sure?"
"When the Empire or the University animates a gemgolem to do basic menial tasks, is it sensitive or is it just following the scripts instructed to it?"
"I mean that's a matter of ongoing discussion, isn't it? One of the best chances for the city guard to win Gemgear is when a gemgolem goes rogue, as if the instincts in the Gems that compose it overwhelmed its instructions—"
"That happens—? Rory, why don't we drop this matter?" Archmund said, and his voice had an undertone of power.
In other circumstances, Rory would have agreed. But his soul had been strengthened by the use of the Gem Archmund had so graciously gifted to him, and Archmund seemed different from before. The Archmund he remembered was aggressive and occasionally broke social mores, but he also hated himself to the point of self-sacrifice and always considered the well-being of other people to a fault. This was different.
"If they have thoughts at all, if they're not just blobs of power, then forcing them to eat each other over and over again is really messed up," Rory said.
"Where is this coming from?"
"I mean, this is the Granavale Dungeon, isn't it? Doesn't that make them the ghosts of ancient dead Granavaleans? And you're just churning them through a grinder. That's not the Archmund I know."
Archmund's eyes darkened. "You don't know me. No one does, really."
"No one? Not your father? Not Mary?"
Archmund laughed harshly. "I wish they did. But no. Especially not them."
Did he mean it, or was he just being dark and brooding as he occasionally did?
"Then why don't you explain it to me?" Rory said. "Why be so… cold?"
Archmund changed the subject so abruptlsy Rory wondered if he was genuinely just confused.
"I don't understand why you suddenly care about the well-being of the dead anyways. You were slaughtering them gleefully for the whole of the winter."
"It's different," Rory said. "It's different when they're trying to kill us or your people. But just slaughtering our way through them to get more Gems…?"
"Self-defense vs factory farming. I still don't see the major ethical harm. They're dead, they're unproductive, and all they were going to do down here was languish and probably kill anyone unfortunate enough to sneak past our barriers and stumble across them. Meanwhile, we ourselves can use what they drop to give ourselves comfortable lives and do very well for ourselves in all aspects. Don't you think that's a worthy trade-off?"
He was very persuasive, to the point where Rory wasn't sure why it had bothered him in the first place.
Well, there were plenty of other things Archmund could use a word of advice on.
"What did Beatrice disagree with you about?"
"Didn't I tell you to drop it?"
"Why is it bothering you? She's disagreeable by nature, isn't she?"
Archmund scowled. It reminded Rory of how he'd looked when they'd dueled, and Archmund had tapped a well of violent, wrathful strength.
"Get out," Archmund said, and it was like getting hit with a bucket of cold water.
But Rory stood firm. His father and grandfather had worked themselves to the bone defending their honor and aiding the Blackstone Household. He knew the look of a man hollowing himself out for glory. He would never be such a man, but such a man sat before him now.
"No," Rory said. "You're my friend. If this is bothering you, I want to help."