Heretical Edge

I had so many questions in that moment, I had no idea where to start. My mind was reeling and I could feel the confusion from Yardbird as well. Not to mention the rest of the Flique probably. Next to us, Tristan and Vanessa were no closer to actually saying anything. We were all staring at the hooded girl in front of us while trying to actually process what she was telling us.

In the end, I was the one who finally found my voice, managing a somewhat weak, "Right, so there's a lot I wanna ask, but first, why would Haiden have some sort of alarm to tell him if there was a ship with a piece of Tartarus nearby?" After a very brief pause I added, "Also, how would he have something like that?"

It was actually Vanessa who answered quickly with a glance toward me. "He and Mom have been doing a lot of work with the Tartarus stuff, trying to make sure they know if anything infected with it comes through." She bit her lip, clearly uncertain of how much more she should say, but eventually settled on, "Because of Mom's other child."

Oh, oh! Right, duh, of course. The orb thing that had gone through Tartarus, the one Sariel created that accidentally became sapient or something and created a whole other universe. Yeah, that was a whole thing. Of course it made sense that Sariel would have been doing things to try to find them, or at least know if they came back here somehow. It was probably just another step in trying to figure out how to safely get over there and communicate with the orb.

Sure, that's one mystery solved, or a couple, Yardbird noted. But what exactly is that ship doing here now? How did it go through that place and how did it get to this point?

Before I could voice those questions out loud, Tristan, who seemed to have been going through the same thought process, answered at least one of them. "So the ship was totally drawn to this place because of the rift energy, right? I mean, the rift's probably got Tartarus energy connected to it. So if the ship also had the same energy in it--"

Vanessa gave an audible gasp, straightening up. "It came through that way! It didn't come through our space and then teleport into the ground, it was in Tartarus somehow and was probably trying to find a way out! Maybe there was some small hole or something thanks to that rift, and the ship kind of fell through that hole to make it here to Earth. So the ship came through the rift from the Tartarus side and just appeared here underground. That's why the town is still intact."

I hadn't even known there was a Tartarus side to these rifts, but now that I thought about it, it did make sense. It was clearly a major power source, and Maestro had been infected by that stuff. Sure, of course he would use it if he could. So sure, that made sense. Or at least as much sense as anything, anyway.

But that raised another question, at least one. "What about the crew?" I immediately asked. "I mean, if the ship was stuck in Tartarus and was looking for an escape, where's the crew that was flying it? Have the Seosten already taken them off it?"

"Probably suspended animation, or cryo- freeze, something like that." After saying that, Vanessa added, "When we were back on the ship, I saw a few systems that seemed to be for that sort of thing. It looked like they were active, but I didn't really get a chance to see much." She said that much before biting her lip as her eyes shifted over to me uncertainly.

Before I could respond, it was Tristan who spoke quickly. "There has to be a whole lot more to that story than we know right now, right? Yeah, Mom believes you did all that stuff, and it probably looks really bad from her point of view, but there's definitely more to it. I mean, what if Grandma was infected by Tartarus and was going to do something really bad and that's why you had to stop her from… um, whatever was happening? What if it wasn't really our grandmother? There's so many possible answers to that. We don't know enough to judge anything." He reached up to put a hand on his sister's shoulder, squeezing it. "And no matter what, we know Flick. She did the best she could."

Keeping a long, heavy sigh, I put both hands against my face and shuddered. This was so much to deal with. It was already too much to deal with when we just had the normal rift and the fact that Sariel was so angry with me. Now we had to add in the ship full of Tartarus energy? Energy that was apparently leaking out and infecting people already?

Lowering my hands, I looked over at Marian. "Why haven't they taken that ship out of here already? You said it crashed a couple weeks ago, so what are they waiting for? They're already down in the ship, have they taken all the energy off of it, like sucked it up or whatever?" I was dreading the answer. It would be really, really bad for them to have what was apparently a giant ball of Tartarus stuff right now. I was pretty sure that would do some unpleasant things to the timeline.

The other girl shook her head. "They can't get to it yet. The ship was magically sealed before it ended up there. Half of it, including where the crew probably is and the cargo hold where it's storing what it took out of Tartarus, are almost completely blocked off. That's the only reason this entire town hasn't been completely wiped out by that expanding energy. There's just enough of it leaking out to corrupt things and empower a few people. If it wasn't magically sealed, everything would be much worse. And those people are trying to open it. They won't listen when I tell them what a bad idea that is. They won't listen to me at all, because I'm connected to you. And believe me, I've been trying to get them to listen to me. I've tried everything to get through to them. They just think I'm lying because I want to help you steal that energy. Or they just think they know better than we do so they can handle it."

It was weird. I had just met this girl. Well, the version of me I was right now had just met her. But there was something strangely familiar about her. I couldn't explain it. Somehow, I just felt like she belonged right here. Maybe I was getting some weird bleedover between rifts, so that what one version of me felt, the others did? Actually, if that other rift had really been so nearby, maybe that was it. Maybe I was so close to that other iteration of me, within a couple weeks and a few days' ride, that I was feeling the trust she-I had had. Or something like that. Did that make sense?

Honestly, about as much sense as anything else we've been through, Yardbird put in. But let's just be careful anyway. She might have some weird trust power or something. But yeah, there is something familiar about her. It kinda feels like we know her or something. She went quiet then, obviously lost in thought. Or maybe she was talking to the rest of the Flique to figure this out. I'd give them some more time for that.

For the moment, I gave a soft sigh, rubbing my face while processing what Marian had said about the Seosten not trusting her. "And I just went in there and showed them Jacob so now they'll be even more convinced than ever that everything you were saying was just a trick."

Tristan looked hesitant, exchanging a silent glance with his sister before speaking up. "Come on, there's no way you could've known. And even if you did, what else could you do? The rift is there, you've gotta get to it. And now we have to stop Mom and the others from doing something dumb with that ship before they get it open and let all that stuff come pouring out. I might not be as good at history as Nessa, but I'm pretty sure the story about Salem didn't end with a huge, intergalactic spaceship coming out of the ground and dumping out a bunch of extradimensional evil energy over the whole continent. So, we can probably interfere with this."

Vanessa shrugged. "The Bystander Effect could have altered a little bit of that, but yes, it doesn't sound likely. Besides, we know Mom wasn't able to get a big chunk of that Tartarus energy right now. That's why she keeps working on the spell she ends up using in the future. The one that helps make--" She cut herself off, once again looking uncertainly over at Marian.

Before the awkwardness could settle in at all, I cleared my throat. "The point is, we can probably safely interfere here as much as we want. I mean, as long as we don't expose our real faces or anything. That could get awkward. But we do need to do everything we can to stop them from opening that ship." I paused, head tilting. "Do you guys think they're keeping it a secret?" As the twins looked at me in confusion, I quickly clarified, "I don't mean from humans. I mean from the rest of the Seosten. We know that Charmeine is friendly with her. They're close or whatever. So if Sariel asked her to keep this secret for a little bit, she might do it. Plus, they tend to go out on extended missions solo or in small groups. Maybe those two, or even a couple more, are here doing this on their own because Sariel wants to use that energy for her secret project. That would explain why this whole thing is still pretty quiet. I mean, look around and think about it. If the whole Seosten leadership knew there was a ship buried here with a piece of Tartarus sitting in its cargo hold or whatever, do you really think they'd be this patient about it? I feel like this entire place would be completely surrounded by ships. Every last civilian in that town would be gone. They'd have this entire area locked down tighter than Crossroads itself."

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Tristan snorted softly. "I get what you mean, but I don't think that that's saying much. Seriously, the security in that place was kind of a joke if you really think about it. Look at all the stuff that happened just last year. Err, relatively speaking. Last year for us in the chronolo-- you get it."

Vanessa nudged him. "The biggest reason it was a joke is because the Seosten installed back doors for themselves. They built the security system specifically to be exploited by them. So it's not really fair to judge solely based on that. Plus, most of the rest of the security failures were Gaia, the headmistress herself, intentionally bypassing them to do things like make sure hybrids like us could be there without setting off every alarm there was."

Tristan offered his sister a matching nudge. "Sure, of course, but then explain how a certain evil Necromancer happened to be spying on everyone all year from the eyes of his pet zombie chef. I don't think Gaia or the Seosten intentionally allowed that to happen."

"I think that one actually came from him getting information from my mom," I pointed out. "Ammon knew he could use the Reaper in the Edge to teleport onto the grounds, I bet that had something to do with Fossor being able to get Escalan and stop any of the security from noticing."

Before either of the other two could respond, I added, "But in any case, guys, we're kind of getting away from the point here. It's possible that we're only dealing with Sariel, Charmeine, and maybe one or two others. Actually, that would explain why there's not a dozen ships flying above those trees up there scouring every inch of the surrounding hundred miles or so for us. They're still trying to keep it quiet. Which means we have a better chance than we would if we had someone like Puriel here."

Vanessa's voice was flat. "If he was here, we'd all be dead before we got within five hundred feet of that ship again. He could kill all of us by himself, especially if he had the added motivation of keeping us away from that Tartarus energy before we steal it from them."

My head bobbed. "Exactly, so that's one bit of good news. Which is something we kind of needed right now. But now that they know I'm here-- I mean that Jacob is here, they have to be debating about whether they should call in reinforcements. Especially if they hate me as much as it seems like they do. So, if we're going to get into that ship and stop them from getting the energy out of it, or doing anything else stupid, we should probably hurry."

Tristan offered a humorless smile, clearly not exactly thrilled by the prospect of what we had to do. "Great, so now not only do we need to get past our own mother and Charmeine, plus maybe a couple others like them so we can steal a ship full of Tartarus energy right out from under them, but we need to do it quickly. Oh, and they already know about 'Jacob' and Marian here so they've got the entire area covered in anti-Necromancy protection, taking away one of our biggest advantages. Not to mention the part where they absolutely hate Jacob, so they're already extra-motivated. I sure can't think of any way this whole thing could go sideways. This whole situation is just perfect. In fact, do you think we could find a way to add another handicap or two to make it more interesting? I'd hate for us to get bored because it was too easy."

"I'm glad that sarcasm super power is working out so well for you," I noted before focusing on Vanessa. "What about that thing you took out of there? Your mom seemed pretty upset when she saw that you had it. And at that point, her looking even more upset than she already did probably means it was something important."

Visibly shaking off anything else she wanted to say right then the other girl nodded. "Yes, in fact, I'm pretty sure it's very important." She held the little thing up then, and I could see that it wasn't really a USB drive. Instead, it looked like a small blue crystal with a bit of sharp metal at one end. "Unless I'm very mistaken, this is the ship's core log. Like the black box. If I had to guess by the tools I saw laying around it, I think Mom and Charmeine have been working to get the thing out, without tripping any of the security measures that would have deleted the contents, for the whole time they've been here. It was still sitting there on the table in that room just down from where you were, so I think Mom just barely managed to get it out before we showed up."

"I'm guessing the flight log thing is pretty important in this case," I murmured. "It could show them where the ship came from, exactly how it ended up in Tartarus, what it was doing there, how it got out again, everything. If they had that, it could just--" Cutting myself off, I gave a low whistle. "Yeah, no wonder she looked so upset when she saw you had it. And now she'll be even more pissed off than she already was. Which is another reason we can be pretty sure the other Seosten don't know about all this, considering how many of them would be crawling all over these woods trying to get that back if they did. But they've gotta be debating about whether they should call in reinforcements, right? At this point, they're probably weighing whether it'd be worse to risk the trouble they'd be in for not telling anyone about the buried ship against how bad it would be to just let Jacob do whatever they think he's gonna do. So how do you guys think that's gonna go?"

Tristan shook his head. "Who knows? But I'll tell you what we should do. We should get in there and deal with this before it becomes an issue. If they do call in help, we're pretty much boned. So let's figure out how we're gonna get that ship out of there and get you through the rift before they can tell anyone what's going on, just in case. You know, try to plan for the worst possibility."

There was a lot I wanted to say to that, but in the end I just nodded slowly and replied, "Okay, so first off, what about that flight log? Can we look at it and see just what we're dealing with here?"

Vanessa hesitated, looking at the thing in her hand. "Um, maybe. I think one of our biggest problems is that we don't even know where the ship came from. The core log itself is pretty universal, but there's specific differences in how you unlock it based on who built the ship, and there's no way for us to find that out without getting back into the thing to look around again."

"Actually," Tristan put in, "we do know where it came from. I mean, I do. When you uhh, shared what you were looking at with me, I recognized the ship layout. It's a Keurankei design. When I was with Grandpa Nick, we found a few of them and had a whole-- never mind, I guess it's not really relevant. But I know what they are, and we even had to open one of the core logs once."

My eyes widened a bit as I asked, "Do you think you could help Vanessa open this one? There might be something in there we can use to get the ship out of there. Or at least something else helpful."

"We'll work on it," Vanessa promised, taking her brother's hand with an anxious look. "But the only way we'll get anywhere with it is by being in that ship. That's our best chance of getting it open. It's not like we can just use human tools and human software to unlock and read it. We don't have Keurankei tech out here, so unless you know where another one of their ships happens to be, that's the only one we can get to. Especially if you want to do this before they call in reinforcements."

Yardbird piped up then. Which we really need to do, since I don't fancy our chances if they bring in anyone else. I barely fancy our chances against those two and whoever else is already here.

"So we need to give you guys a chance to get in there," I murmured. "Which means I'll have to distract Charmeine and Sariel, get their attention on me. As pissed as they are, that shouldn't be too hard."

"You mean we'll have to distract them," Marian put in. "I'm not letting you go out there by yourself."

As I looked that way uncertainly, the girl gave a little chuckle. "I get it, I get it. You don't know how much you can trust me. I could be lying. I could be manipulating you or whatever. This whole thing could be a trick." Even after saying that, she focused on me with a smile. "But let me guess, you think you trust me. You feel like you know me, and you don't really know why. You don't understand why I seem familiar, right? Let me show you the answer to that, and prove you can trust me."

Before I could ask how she was going to do that, the girl closed her eyes and visibly focused. There was a slight glowing effect at first, which got brighter. Belatedly, I realized there was a second figure partially emerging from her. Sort of like when a Seosten separated from a host, but in this case the figure remained mostly connected to Marian, only coming partway out. Seeing that, I took a reflexive step back. "Whoa, okay, okay, you're possessed or something?"

"Oh, it's a little more complicated than just a simple possession," both Marian and the figure, whose form was gradually becoming less blurry and indistinct, replied together.

"Uh, really? Cuz that's pretty complicated already," I murmured with a grimace. "Exactly how much weirder is this situation gonna get?"

By that point, the glowing shape had resolved into a recognizable form. A very recognizable form, actually. A form I saw every time I looked in the mirror. Or close, anyway. As our eyes met, this other member of the Flique gave me a wink while announcing, "Dude.

"Someday, we're really gonna have to learn to stop asking that question."