Two-World Traders (progression fantasy)

Constance ran toward him, falling onto her knees as if collapsing into a desperate prayer. Mr. Grimsby was lying on his shoulder, eyes still staring past Elias. She rolled him onto his back and lightly slapped his cheek, reciting his name. She checked his pulse, and the blood seemed to run out of her too.

"Is he still alive?" someone asked.

Constance shook her head, unable to say the words.

"Then where… why isn't his power pouring out of him?" Caius tried to make the question sound considerate rather than crass.

Constance still flashed a look of annoyance, but then she appeared equally perplexed—it was a good question—until, finally, a third emotion swept over her. She realized something, though no one else seemed to. "He's dead," she said softly. "Trust me. I wish it were not so."

Elias peered toward her audience. Grief, shock, and disbelief still composed their sad symphony, but another, rising sound soon joined the melody: whispers of confusion. After all, there was no collector on the entire Great Continent who had collected more relics than Bartholomew Grimsby, and yet not even a table scrap escaped him.

"Because—" Lucas paused mid-sentence, picked up his second rapier, and sheathed both blades. "Because he was not one of us," he said, matching eyes with his fellow high collectors. "Bartholomew was not a collector."

"That's impossible," Keo inserted. "No regular could have fought like that."

"I'm not sure a collector could have fought like that either," Lucas replied, "at least, not at his age."

"Unless he was the divine," Keo countered.

"Hmph." Lucas found that amusing. "The divine. That old tale. I suppose the lie might as well die with the man. I meant what I said. We are equals, all of us, and equality cannot exist without transparency."

"Lucas." High Collector Zylas stepped forward. "We should discuss—"

"The truth," Lucas finished for him. "I couldn't agree more, Jameel. Look at them." He gestured to his distraught but also undeniably curious audience. "They're begging for it now. The truth, my friends, is that the man you knew as High Collector Grimsby was no collector at all. He was something else. He was an Ancestor."

The crowd now appeared equal parts baffled and incredulous.

"Impossible, you say," Lucas said for them. "Jameel, you love history lessons. Would you like to give this one, or shall I?"

High Collector Zylas stayed silent.

"Very well." Lucas was quick to accept the responsibility. "Millennia ago, there was a great Cataclysm. You all know that part. In the ashes of our Ancestors, civilization was started anew, rebuilt by generations severed from the once innate power of their great grandfathers and grandmothers. Now the half you haven't heard. You see, there were some who predicted the Cataclysm, and when faced with this coming storm, they built themselves a bunker: Ancestor's Hollow, or at least that is the name we give it now.

"Deep, deep within the Void Sea, they constructed their floating fortress." Lucas began pacing. "A city in an ocean of black, utterly unreachable except to those few with a transcendent's gift of sight. For thousands of years, they lived separately from us, infused with their technology, spying on the recovering world they had abandoned, albeit always in secret. But slowly, too, their tiny civilization collapsed in on itself, until a few centuries ago when a man who has had many names—but who we all knew as Bartholomew Grimsby—stepped into our world for good.

"His power does not pour out of him because the Ancestors had altered their very biology, made themselves more receptive to relics, though he never would share with us how exactly this was done. He only said it was impossible, though that may have been another one of his lies. Another piece of power he kept for himself.

"Yes, the old man did enjoy his stories," Lucas continued. "The rumor of a divine was a clever construction, for Bartholomew was anything but naive. He knew others would notice certain peculiarities about him, not least of all his unnaturally long lifespan, and so he invented a false secret to cover up the real one. He had always believed that the best way to bury one story was to pile on another, like the enigmatic identify we all hide behind in public. And that, my fellow collectors, is the truth long hidden from you. Or at least, the truth as I know it, the truth he revealed to his fellow high collectors. I'm sure he hid much from us as well."

"Some of us have been to Ancestor's Hollow," a middle-aged woman said. She was tall and seemed important, though Elias had only seen her around once before. "Those of us who have transcended. But we were never told about High Collector Grimsby. The place was abandoned."

"The secrets of the Valshynar are multilayered," Lucas said. "As a transcendent, you knew what they did not, and I knew what even you did not." He turned toward the ignorant majority in question. "In Ancestor's Hollow, there is a machine. There are many machines, in fact, but there is just one that we use today. It increases our receptivity to relics, and it is the only way to make one of us transcendent, which is why Mirabella has seen the device and its location firsthand. Of course, this machine still requires a great many relics, more than we have to spread around, though if we were a richer people…" He shrugged.

Let them consider that question for themselves, the shrug seemed to say, for a more fundamental one still needed to be answered by every collector standing in their broken circle—and eventually, by those who would learn the news from afar. Whose side would they pick? What even were the sides, now with Mr. Grimsby gone?

Lucas decided to clarify the choice for them. "It would appear you all now have a decision to make," he said. "Stay with me here on Lost Island if you believe in my vision, though it will be our shared vision, or go with one of them and fight to keep things as they were." He nodded toward Constance. "Go fight for the secrets they keep from you. Fight for their privileges over yours."

"You venomous traitor." Constance stood up from the body of Mr. Grimsby, the man somehow smaller as he lay silently at her feet. "Don't be fools. Lucas does not wish to free anybody or anything save for himself from the shackles of decency and restraint. He doesn't want to free you. He wants to extend his control over the Valshynar and whoever else gets in his way. This arrogant bastard is no revolutionary. He is a conqueror, and this is his coup. But we will end it now. Lost Island is not yours. The Gray Academy is not yours. You do not get to expel us."

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"Then you must expel me," Lucas said simply.

Constance looked ready to, and yet something was happening that put a stopper on her desire for speedy justice. People were indeed choosing sides. Lucas was walking backward, heel-first, eye contact with Constance never wavering, expanding the gulf between the two high collectors.

She did not move. Constance Eve's eternal line was simply held.

In contrast, Lucas stopped and stood in place, though he was done wielding words. The message was clear, the choice unmistakable. They were with him, or they were with her. His outed allies were first to move into place, standing like soldiers at the ready behind their rebellious leader. A few people were already gathered behind Constance, those who did not even need to think about the choice. Elias noticed her flash a glance toward High Collector Zylas, who appeared paralyzed.

"What are you doing?" she asked him sharply. "Get over here."

"Thinking," he said. High Collector Zylas took a deep, intentional breath, his head shake gradually transforming into a nod. "The pact is broken." He gazed out to the horizon. "A united Valshynar only works when each of the Five Great Schools can agree on a common purpose and process. That is its core. I did not imagine it so breakable."

"He fucking broke it." An uncharacteristically unhinged Constance pointed at the smirking culprit in question with a steady finger.

"He did," High Collector Zylas agreed. "But the fact remains that it is broken beyond immediate repair. And so, after many years of service, I must relinquish my station as a high collector. I will instead stand my own ground"—he positioned himself farthest away from the sparring ring—"and invite anyone who wants no part in this conflict to join me. The Four Winds School has always opened its doors the widest."

"Now is not the time for your cowardice," Constance said.

"Something we actually agree on," Lucas replied, looking far less bothered by it. Perhaps he felt the math worked in his favor.

But High Collector Zylas—no, Jameel—had already drawn his own proverbial line from which he would not retreat. Elias considered joining him. Surely, he wanted no part in their conflict. He wanted no part in them period, but was Jameel offering that? Elias's situation was unique, his decision unlike anyone else's. Did it even matter whom he stood with now, so long as he could walk away free and clear tomorrow? Lucas did not wish to leave this place, but nor did Constance. Nonetheless, one of them would have to.

Was that all this was then, he asked himself: a simple strategic choice? Or did he care about the outcome? Did he care about what he had just witnessed? Mr. Grimsby would have spared Lucas, but Lucas had killed the old man just as he had so easily killed High Collector Redcaller and those men in Azir. If Elias looked past their arguments and judged them plainly by their actions—or by the hunger in Lucas's piercing emerald eyes—he knew he could not trust the man. Elias could hardly hold ambition against a person, but cruelty was quite another matter. Elias did not enjoy killing. That much he knew about himself. Yes, he had done the deed, but never when he did not need to, not even when it came to pirates.

And so maybe it boiled down to whom he trusted most. Lucas was a killer. Jameel was a coward. And Constance—Constance was still Constance. She had never tried to buy his loyalty, as Lucas and possibly Mr. Grimsby had, and still she had protected his freedom for years without condition or expectation. She was curt and definitely a little cold, but finding himself marooned in a bloody storm of betrayal, Elias considered these qualities virtues, not vices. She was the only person here he could believe.

And she was looking right at him.

"Elias," Constance said, beckoning him expectantly. "You are a Serpent Moon collector, and I will make this worth your while."

He nodded after a second—unsure what she meant by that—took a step toward her, then stopped himself again. What about his classmates?

What about Harriet?

They had only known each other for a few weeks, but relationships could not always be measured in time. The thought of her tugged at his heart as he searched the crowd for a short girl with a button nose and a mole on her cheek.

He saw Caius first, standing to the left of Lucas. Was Elias surprised by that? No, he decided. Keo, meanwhile, had joined Constance almost immediately, as had Maria with Jameel. Dion had joined Constance too, but only for a few seconds before hastily abandoning principle in favor of reality and a place beside Maria. He was no fighter either.

Elias felt a finger tap his back. He whirled around, and there he finally saw her.

"Elias," Harriet said, "I'm going with Dawnlight." It was a question for him, yet not one for her.

He shook his head. "I don't trust him."

"He did what he had to do."

"No," Elias disagreed. "He did what he wanted to do."

"I'm going with Dawnlight" was all she said again. She stood unmoving despite her stated certainty. She stood there for him, he knew, for any hope that still remained between them, for a passion that had blossomed so suddenly and so perfectly and now would wilt as if dipped in poison.

The words he needed but struggled to say must have already been written on his face, for her lip was quivering, her eyes welling. She wiped a tear defensively, like a parry. And then she turned.

Elias was last to choose a side, though they had already conducted their count. Jameel had split the vote. Lucas did not command a majority, but he had attracted—if not already recruited—a small plurality, not to mention proven his penchant for violence.

"We take a ship," Constance said, reassessing the situation.

"You can share a ship with Jameel," Lucas countered. A conqueror, indeed.

"I don't give one damn what Jameel does or doesn't do," Constance shot back. "We're taking my fucking airship, and he isn't invited. Come on." She stormed off toward the direction of the docks. "We're leaving."

* * *

Despite his repeated threats, Lucas could not prevent Constance from taking one of two large ships parked at Lost Island's modest port, though Jameel grudgingly accepted a far smaller vessel. His improvised alliance was the weakest of them, held together by an aversion to conflict, whether one labeled that cowardice or principled pacifism. Which left another large ship and a medium-sized one behind for Lucas, though Constance explained that most of the Valshynarian fleet was still spread across the continent, their crews blissfully unaware of all that had transpired. Lucas had stolen the Gray Academy for now, but the real race for power had only just begun.

Out on the Void Sea, Elias approached her alone. Constance had taken over the wheel of a ship he recognized, for it was the first such vessel he'd ever stepped onto. Property was shared among the Valshynar, but some things were simply understood, and this was the airship she had commanded for years—the ship she would never cede to Lucas. And so she held the wheel, just as Briley loved to, a ritual to keep her hands still as her mind flew far ahead of them, trying to chart every course they might yet follow.

"You said that joining you would be worth my while," Elias said under a breath, trying not to be overheard, for the question felt unbecoming. "That's not why I came by the way, but… what did you mean?"

"Give me a day, will you?" Constance was staring ahead at nothing, at black on black. She added after a minute, "You liked that girl, Harriet."

"Yeah," Elias sighed. He hadn't stopped thinking about her since their departure an hour earlier.

"You made the right call," Constance assured him. "It is seldom the easy one."

He nodded, peering back at Keo and the rest of them: twenty-one men and women including the two of them. Lucas had won over twenty-eight, Jameel eleven. But most collectors were stationed elsewhere, dotted across the Great Continent like land unclaimed. They would never witness what everyone here had witnessed. They would hear the story secondhand, abridged and revised, before making their decisions.

There was so much to figure out. "Where will we go?" Elias asked her.

"Isn't it obvious?" Constance replied, for once meeting his gaze. "The Serpent Moon School headquarters."