The following day, Elion and Gorman sat in the garage for a Praxis training session. After a few of these sessions, Elion felt like he understood Praxis better. Gorman walked him through interacting with the system, and Elion had gotten better at navigating menus without having to say everything out loud.

  The scattered pieces of Elion’s inert laserarm lay on a table, and Gorman picked one up, inspecting it. “Interesting. You said that it disappeared when you used your Manifest Armaments ability?”

  Elion nodded. “It went wherever my clothes go when they swap with the armor.”

  “It seems like your ability is incompatible with other forms of Sentinel power,” Gorman said. “Anything you’re wearing goes to some kind of Aurelian void, where Artefin power doesn’t exist. There is no trace of Artificer power on these rifle parts.”

  “What should I do with them?”

  “Leave the parts on Keyla’s desk; she can probably rebuild the gun.”

  Elion pushed all the rifle parts back into Brynna’s bag and set it aside as Gorman retrieved a book and lay it on the table.

  Gorman started flipping through Saint Hendreston’s Complete Compendium of Ascendency Paths and Guide to Praxian Systems.

  I wonder why he’s doing this. He acts helpful, but there’s something he’s not telling us.

  Gorman began explaining something on the page.

  “So it is possible to call up the underlying mathematics behind the—”

  Elion struggled to pay attention, distracted by thoughts of Gorman’s motives. Why was he no longer worried about Elion getting off the island as soon as possible? Why, if he had a stash of Skillstones, did he not offer to help with their plan to heal infected?

  There’s still a lot I don’t understand. Gorman probably has really good reasons. His Skillstones probably wouldn’t work for some reason.

  “Can we talk about Ascendency stones?” Elion asked.

  “Sure,” Gorman said, looking up from the book. “What do you want to know?”

  “I’m just curious about what they all look like. And how other Ascendencies use them.”

  Gorman flipped through the book, finding a page with some rough sketches; gemstones in different shapes. He pointed to a few of the cends. “Aurelian Tear. Zelian Splinter. This one’s a Heranan Seed. Here’s an Artefin Skillstone.”

  Elion looked at the charcoal sketches, rough and uncolored. “Not much like the real thing,” he said, recalling the way his Aurelian Tear burned and sparkled in the sunlight.

  Gorman considered Elion’s statement. “I could go get a Skillstone and show you. I’ll only be a minute.”

  “Really?” Elion said. “That would be interesting.”

  Gorman rose and headed for the stairs.

  Elion waited, feeling the urge to follow Gorman and discover where he kept his safe. He listened, and thought he heard the man rummaging around in his room.

  The lights flickered in the garage. Then everything turned off, lights, equipment, and otherwise.

  Elion heard Gorman cursing from overhead, then heard the man’s boots as he ran across the floor. The ladder creaked, protesting as Gorman climbed it, up higher into the tower.

  Elion rose from his seat and walked cautiously to the base of the stairs, listening. More creaking from the ladder. Elion climbed the stairs to the living area. Gorman’s door, normally closed and locked, sat ajar. He slipped inside.

  Gorman’s bedroom was filled with clutter. Much like the garage below, things had been piled everywhere. A work bench stacked with parts and tools had a small space cleared on it, where Gorman seemed to have been working on some kind of chip with very fine circuits engraved into it.

  Elion blinked, overwhelmed by the chaos for a moment, then spotted the safe.

  It sat beneath a workbench. Several boxes of bolts had been shifted away to allow space for the door to swing open. Elion crossed the room and knelt before the small box.

  The safe was still cracked open. Elion pulled it wide. There, lying on the shelf, was Elion’s Ascendency Stone, the one he had given to Gorman to keep safe. Beside it, identical in shape, color, and size, was another Aurelian Tear.

  Elion gasped, then bit his tongue.

  Next to the Aurelian Tears were two small velvet bags. Elion withdrew one from the safe and hefted it in his hand, hearing the clink of gemstones inside. He pulled the bag open. Inside he found several small rough crystals; yellowish-green, irregular in shape and size. They looked exactly like miniature versions of the Shard across the river.

  Elion hissed, pressing air between his teeth, then dropped one of the crystals into the palm of his hand. He recalled Gorman’s speech earlier, how he had mentioned collecting pieces of the crystal Shard to experiment with.

  Would these also have a distortion field effect on Ascendency magic?

  Elion gripped the shard. “What is this?” he muttered to himself.

  Praxis responded.

  << Place your Ascendency stone on the Altar >>

  Elion rocked back from the safe, his head spinning. An Ascendency stone? He did not recognize these; they certainly hadn’t been among the drawings Gorman showed him. Maybe Keyla would.

  Could the entire Shard be an Ascendency Stone? Something told him it wasn’t.

  Overhead, the lights flickered back on. Elion jumped, feeling exposed. He examined the pale yellow-green gem in the full light for a moment. It reminded Elion of a chunk of green apple Jolly Rancher. I need to show this to Keyla.

  He pocketed the crystal, pulled the drawstrings on the pouch, and carefully laid the bag back in the safe. A creak from the ladder warned him of Gorman’s imminent return.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  A second velvet pouch lay beside the first; Elion peered into this one and found a handful of rectangular teal gems; Skillstones. More than Keyla’s three. Gorman did have his own stash. Elion carefully replaced this bag where he had found it.

  Should I take my Tear?

  If he took it, it would be more obvious when Gorman looked in the safe. He left the Tear there with the other Ascendency Stones.

  Elion swung the safe door back to where he had found it.

  Quietly, cautiously, Elion darted from Gorman’s room.

  Elion waited for Gorman in the garage, fiddling nervously with the pages of the book. He heard Gorman return to his room, and the sound of the safe closing and locking.

  “Here you go,” Gorman said, coming down the stairs. “A Skillstone.” Gorman held the gem between his two large fingers. Elion tried to look at it, his heart pounding rapidly in his chest.

  “Oh,” Elion said. “It’s pretty,” he muttered. He tried not to meet Gorman’s eye, afraid of revealing his knowledge. Gorman had Elion’s missing Aurelian Tear.

  Gorman sat at the workbench in his room. The room was filled with useful things he had salvaged from broken machines. He would find a use for all of it, eventually. His desk was stacked with projects, tools, and other items arranged in what might look chaotic to the unfamiliar eye. But Gorman knew exactly where everything was.

  If someone were to come into his room, sort through the stack of papers piled on a chair in the corner, remove one, and leave, Gorman would notice its absence. His mind naturally held a three-dimensional map of everything in the room. That wasn’t explicitly an Artefin ability, but the way his brain worked made him a natural fit for the Thread of Creation.

  Through his window, the top of the Shard was visible in the distance.

  Gorman sighed, running his hands through his hair and scratching his beard. He stared at the small chip lying on the workbench in front of him, no larger than his thumbnail. The chip was made of a dark blue metal alloy, with teal lines tracing intricate circuits—a marvel of miniaturization and interconnected antennas.

  Nobody else had been able to marvel at it yet. Gorman wasn’t done with it.

  It had taken all of his Artefin craftsmanship to construct this small device, but Artefin work alone would not suffice. Another power was needed for the chip to reach its full potential. Gorman picked up the chip, turning it over in his hands and inspecting it under a lens. Still, he had not quite mastered the techniques he was using—or rather, developing—to create this small chip.

  He had started the project about a year ago. Ever since that Aurelian, Prator, had shown up in Aterfel, Gorman had been working on it. Prator had astonished Gorman with his ability to persuade people to follow him. Gorman still wondered if the man had been using some kind of Sentinel power, but he knew of no Aurelian abilities that could compel a man to obey.

  Gorman had always thought about people and their minds as if they were machines. That analogy—minds as machines—had served him well in leading Aterfel. Admittedly, Aterfel had been falling apart ever since the Shard had grown across the river.

  He likened people's minds to computers: input certain signals, and the mind would process and evaluate those inputs, resulting in a given output. Over time, Gorman had come to understand that not every mind functioned the same way—people were different, after all. What worked for one person might fail for another. So Gorman had learned to analyze people individually: their levers and buttons, the words and actions that could gently guide them toward doing what he wanted.

  Despite his efforts, the strategy proved frustrating. He’d been forced to adopt a kind, grandfatherly appearance, speaking softly and soothingly to people. It only seemed to work about twenty or thirty percent of the time.

  So when Prator had arrived, spilling kind words and flashing a vigorous smile that convinced nearly half of Gorman’s people—Aterfel’s population—to follow him into the wastelands, Gorman had been stunned.

  Gorman picked up the chip and turned it over carefully in his fingers. He inspected it, then set it aside, and picked up a second, uncompleted chip. He selected a sharp engraving tool, and began carefully etching circuits onto the chip, in the shape of miniature runes.

  Somehow, Prator had mastered the ability to manipulate minds in a way Gorman had never thought possible. The realization had opened his mind to new ways of thinking.

  Gorman had not meant to summon the crystal Shard. He was lucky he’d thought to perform his experiment across the river; and that nobody else had been around to refute his explanation for it.

  He still congratulated himself for his quick thinking in that particular instance. The Shard did have many of the same effects that the Legends said Tephalians had.

  At first Gorman had watched the Shard with fascination. It took control of living things, directing their minds and efforts toward one goal. He had learned a lot, watching as the infected scavengers coordinated like ants.

  He’d loved watching it, until he realized what the Shard’s goal was.

  It was trying to kill him.

  For a year, the town of Aterfel had fought against that Shard and its infected. Still, the number of infected grew, and their attempts to kill Gorman grew more sophisticated.

  Selecting a thin sheet of transparent plastic from a small pile, Gorman traced a rune onto his chip with a stylus. The shape glowed, a faint turquoise on the clear plastic. He pressed this over the top of the chip he was making, sealing the circuits beneath the plastic.

  Elion’s arrival had derailed everything.

  The damaged bridge was forcing Gorman to act before he was ready. His plan to destroy the Shard had involved a bit more meticulous preparation. But with the bridge out, he’d scrambled to assemble the bomb.

  Gorman hadn’t believed Elion’s claims to be the lost heir of the Erodian Throne at first. But the boy’s ignorance and naivete had gone a long way to convincing him.

  And then he’d learned that Dorian’s warlocks were searching for someone matching Elion’s description. They were also searching for Zev, and offering a significant reward to anyone who could help them.

  Gorman had sat on that information for a time. He didn’t want to draw Dorian’s attention to Aterfel. He didn’t want people asking questions about the Shard.

  But he’d decided that if he could get both rewards—for Elion and Zev—it would be worth it. So he’d sat Elion down at the transmitter, and used the boy to locate Zev.

  But the fact remained; the Shard had to be destroyed. Gorman regretted that. He’d learned a lot from studying the Shard. But it had gotten too close with that last attempt.

  If Elion and Keyla hadn’t been there when the infected launched their attack… Well, he didn’t like to think about that.

  Gorman finished working on his chip, and picked up the next one. He had to make a lot more of them before he could fully set his plans in motion.

  As he worked, something niggled at the back of his mind. Someone had been in his room. A sheet of paper had slipped off the top of a stack. A box of bolts near his safe had been disturbed.

  Had he done this, when rushing out of his room to check on the Threnody Core?

  Or had Elion slipped into his room, and helped himself to the contents of the open safe?

  Gorman hadn’t noticed any disturbance to the safe, but he’d been flustered by the glitchy Threnody Core.

  Bending down, Gorman entered the code to his safe and pulled the door open. Everything was as he remembered it; two Aurelian Tears and his small pouches of Cends resting on the shelf.

  If Elion had opened the safe, he would guess Gorman was lying to him.

  Gorman started to close the safe, then reached in and withdrew the velvet pouches. He dumped them out on the table.

  In an instant he knew one of his Festrin Shards was missing.

  Elion.

  He would have to try to get it back from Elion, before Venya and her warlocks came to collect him. He would be sad to lose it. He would have to be careful though, because he’d be even more sad to lose his finder’s fee when Venya captured Elion. That would be worth a lot more than a single cend.

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