Chapter 143: The True Target
Adept Torvin’s head snapped toward Rel. "Commander. What is the boy talking about?"
Rel did not answer. Her staff had appeared in her hands in a manner that I could not track, and a spell configuration was beginning to form above it. She did not acknowledge Adept Torvin’s question as her eyes were fixed on me.
I could see the calculation and the puzzlement inside them. No doubt she was trying to reconcile how a sixteen year old Acolyte, whose history and abilities were very clear and was just here as a statistic, had gained access to information that even she did not fully yet know.
To push the knife even deeper, I kept speaking, "The Harvest," I said, filling the silence. "That’s what they call it, did you know that? Orath and the Conclave. Three hundred years of preparation, and now it’s almost done. Everyone here was sent here to die, all for..."
I stopped speaking as a horrifying realization occurred to me. I had been thinking that we were brought here for a sacrifice or something like that, but it was not; we were just collateral damage, the real target was... Rex.
Adept Fenara heard what I said to Commander Real, and she made a sound like a small, wounded noise.
"That’s insane," Adept Varis cursed. "The Conclave is a rival Academy, but they wouldn’t..."
"They would," Adept Torvin said quietly, after Orath, he was the oldest here and understood many things that the Adepts here did not. His hand was shaking on his staff.
"And they did." He was looking at Rel now, not at me. "Commander. You knew."
Rel’s jaw tightened, and her shoulder loosened; it was almost as if the pressure on her shoulders had been taken away. "I knew what I was ordered to know. No more."
"You knew people were going to die," Adept Torvin barked. "You knew we were being suppressed, and you said nothing."
"I followed orders."
"Whose orders?" He asked. "The Council’s? Or the Conclave’s?"
Rel did not answer. But her silence was answer enough.
Adept Torvin turned to face the pyramid. Orath was still standing at its base, his instrument pressed to the black surface, and despite all the changes in the camp, he had not turned to look at what was going on.
"Scholar Orath," Adept Torvin called out. "Step away from the pyramid. You are under arrest."
Orath did not move.
"Orath!"
The old scholar turned. His face was the same kind, lined face it had always been. But his eyes were wrong, they were too bright, almost too still, and I had looked into eyes like this in the body of Rex that I could not still find.
However, looking at Orath at the moment, I was just realizing that his eyes were the eyes of something that was looking out from behind a mask.
This body here was not the true Orath; he was wearing it like a suit!
"Under arrest, Adept Torvin?" Orath’s voice was calm. "On what charge? Listening to a delusional Acolyte who claims that I work for the Conclave and you are all about to die? The current crop of Adept these days is clearly dropping. Don’t you see what you have here? The boy is clearly suffering from Essence deprivation. His mind is breaking. You would be wise to ignore him and seek to aid the poor soul in his time of need, not feed his delusions."
"His mind is not breaking," Adept Torvin slowly spoke after deliberating upon the words of Orath for a few seconds. "I would have believed you if these surveyor stakes were not real. The unknown dampeners on them are real. I felt it myself, maybe every other thing he said may be nonsense, but this is evidence in front of my eyes, besides, Commander Rel did not disprove anything he had said, which is even more troubling."
Orath sighed, a long, slow sound; it sounded like a man who had been patient for centuries and was growing tired of it. I don’t know why this was the impression I got when I heard the sound; maybe it was because I was listening more and was realizing with more horror that Orath was far from what he appeared.
I thought like Commander Rel, Orath would give up the charade, but he continued to defend his position.
"The stakes are part of the survey array," he said. "They are designed to measure ambient Essence fluctuations. The fact that they absorb a negligible amount of Essence is a known and documented feature. There is no dampener. There is no conspiracy. There is only a frightened boy and a group of Adepts who have forgotten how to think critically."
Commander Rel suddenly stepped forward. Her staff was still raised, but the configuration above it had dissipated. She was not attacking, and the other Adepts gave her space. I could see they were still confused, but I was looking for Rex.
"Orath," she said. "The boy knew about the stakes. He knew about the array. He knew things he could not have known unless someone told him. How do you explain that?"
Orath’s eyes flickered toward me. Then back to Rel.
Right, I was reminded that Rel and Orath may work together, but they did not seem to be partners, just parts of a massive organization forced to be in the same place due to their commitments.
In an organization like this, trust was not something that could be easily obtained, and I wondered what I could do with this information.
"The boy is perceptive," Orath replied to her, frowning for the first time. "Perhaps he noticed what the rest of them did not. That is not evidence of a conspiracy. It is evidence of curiosity."
"Curiosity," I finally said. "Is that what you call it when someone finds the bodies?"
Orath looked at me, and he grinned, and I knew the reason for that. He had succeeded in wasting enough time.
The foghorn sounded.
He did not care that their operation had been exposed; it was already too late, the person he needed, Rex, was already missing, and now he expected the demons to finish us off.
Everyone froze when they heard the sound.
Deeper and resonant, a vibration that bypassed the ears and arrived directly in the chest. The pyramid’s black surface pulsed red. Once. Twice.
I had become familiar with this event after seeing it fifteen times, but the others began to panic as the skies began to darken.
I hated the fact that I was seeing this happen, and now that they were all close to me, I could observe these changes even more.
"What was that?" Fenara whispered.
"The eruption," I said. "It’s starting."
The ground trembled. A crack opened at the eastern edge of the camp, not ten metres from the instrument tables. Red light bled from the fissure, and the air filled with the smell of sulfur and old blood.
The first Khaaz emerged.
