Chapter 39: The Guard Relic
[Ding!]
[New Objective: Retrieve the Guard Relic.]
[Description: The Guard Relic, once claimed, generates a protective barrier around a designated Faction territory, repelling and containing lesser entities that breach from the Edge into the Human World]
Lucas stared at the description for a long moment, the words sinking in slowly through the haze of exhaustion and fading adrenaline still gripping him.
"A barrier," he said. "Against exactly the kind of thing that just tried to kill us."
"That’s not a coincidence," Eleanor said grimly, reading her own copy of the notification. "The system doesn’t hand out convenient solutions unless the problem’s already guaranteed to get worse."
The words had barely settled when a second notification chimed, quieter, colder in its brevity.
[Ding!]
[Faction member count updated: 102.]
Eleanor’s face went pale. "That’s... that’s ten fewer than this morning."
"The attack," Lucas said quietly. "We lost ten people to these fuckers."
The silence that followed was heavy, the full weight of the losses settling over the group all at once.
Ten people. Ten people who’d survived The Edge, survived the Gateway, survived everything up to this point, only to die in what should have been the safety of home.
Mark’s voice broke the silence, "Do we know who? Names, I mean. Or is it just a number now."
"I don’t know yet," Eleanor said, and something in her voice cracked slightly at having to admit it. "I’ll find out. Everyone deserves to be named, not just counted."
She crossed her arms, staring out toward the dormitories where the attack had first started. "If the system’s handing us a Relic that specifically counters this exact threat, that tells us something too. Whoever built this system anticipated the breach happening. Maybe even wanted it to happen."
"Wonderful," Mark muttered. "Just what we needed. Confirmation that we’re still someone’s entertainment."
Eleanor’s jaw tightened, grief and resolve warring visibly across her face before resolve won out. "Then we don’t wait. Lucas and I will go for the Relic tomorrow, first thing in thew morning."
"Just the two of you?" Mark asked, brows furrowing.
"Someone needs to hold the fortress while we’re gone," Eleanor said. "That’s you. I need someone I trust absolutely at the front if anything else breaches while we’re away, and there’s nobody I trust more than you to keep everyone alive."
Mark’s usual humor dimmed slightly under the weight of that. "You’re really putting this on me."
"I am," Eleanor said, softer now. "Because you can handle it. You’ve been handling it since the day we landed without Lucas. I need that same version of you here, holding the line while we go find something that might actually keep everyone safe for a longer time."
Mark exhaled, some of the old confidence settling back over his features despite the exhaustion clearly weighing on him. "Yeah. Okay. I’ve got this. Go find your relic. I’ll hold down the fort while you’re gone. Shit I can’t even make a joke about dying cuz I know my ability wouldn’t let me..."
Lucas furrowed his eyebrows. "I rather not joke with that if I were you."
Where Lucas ran a risk of dying at any possible moment, Mark’s ability avoided just that.
Lucky him...
***
Lucas was sitting on the edge of his bed staring at nothing in particular when the knock came.
He stood up and opened the door revealing Eleanor standing there in the dim hallway light.
"Can I come in?"
"Sure."
She stepped inside, closing the door behind her, and settled onto the edge of the bed beside him without waiting for an invitation, the way three years of friendship and living together had earned her the right to.
"You were shaking earlier," she said, going straight to the point. "Out on the quad before the notification hit. I want to know why."
Lucas kept his eyes forward, on the far wall, on anything that wasn’t her face. "Just adrenaline," he said, "fights like that take it out of you."
"Lucas." Her voice was gentle. "I’ve been with you long times now to know what your adrenaline crash looks like. That wasn’t it. You looked like you’d seen something that terrified you more than the actual beasts that attacked us earlier"
He felt the old, familiar pull to just tell her... Not everything, obviously not the [Regression], not the order that would kill him for speaking it aloud, but at least the shape of the fear, the cold certainty that whatever advantage The Edge had been lending him might not follow him home. He wanted, badly, to let someone else carry even a fraction of that weight.
"It’s nothing you need to worry about," he said instead. "I promise."
"That’s not an answer."
"Come on, Elle."
Eleanor studied him for a long moment, something complicated passing across her eyes — frustration, maybe, but also a kind of familiarity, like she’d walked this exact road with him before and already knew how it ended.
"Lucas, listen..." she began.
"The weeks you were missing... before we built the fortress, before any of this, I used to lie awake running through every possible version of what might have happened to you. Not because I thought you were weak. Because I knew you’d try to handle whatever it was completely on your own, whether or not you should have.That left me worried. So worried, you won’t even understand even if I told you..."
Lucas swallowed hard, his throat tight. "Elle—"
"Let me finish." She cut him off.
"I’m not trying to guilt trip you. I just need you to understand that when I see you shaking and pretending it’s nothing, I don’t just see what happened toady. I see every version of you that’s ever decided I or Mark couldn’t handle whatever you were actually carrying. And I need you to know, we can handle it. Whatever it is. We’d rather carry it with you than watch you carry it alone and pretend we don’t notice."
"You know," she said after a pause, quieter, "you’ve always done this. Even back at school. Whenever something was actually bothering you with a bad grade, a fight with your family, whatever it was, you’d just quietly carry it yourself and tell everyone you were fine. I used to think it was because you didn’t trust us enough to share it."
"That’s not—"
"I know that now." She looked at him properly, something soft in her expression despite the underlying worry. "I think you just decided somewhere along the way that your problems weren’t worth putting on anyone else. Which is, for the record, an incredibly stupid way to go through life, in case nobody’s told you that yet."
A tired laugh escaped him despite everything. "Well, damn.."
"It’s true." She said. "You don’t have to tell me everything tonight. I’m not going to force it out of you. But I need you to know that whatever it is, whatever got you shaking on a battlefield after fighting worse things without flinching, I’m not going anywhere, Mark isn’t either. You don’t have to carry it alone just because you’ve convinced yourself that’s easier."
She looked up. "Losing you is one thing. But losing you slowly, piece by piece while I watch is way scarier. To me at least..."
Lucas didn’t answer right away, his throat tightening with the specific ache of being cared for by someone he couldn’t fully be honest with, no matter how badly he wanted to be.
"Thank you," he said finally, quiet and sincere. "Thank you so much."
She stood, stretching carefully around her still-healing ribs, and paused at the door. "Get some sleep. We’ve got a relic to find tomorrow, and I need you sharp, not haunted."
"Heh, I’ll try."
"Try harder than that." She lingered a moment longer, her hand on the doorframe. "For what it’s worth, whatever you’re not telling us, I don’t think it makes you weaker. I just wish you’d let us help carry it, instead of always assuming you have to do this part alone too."
Lucas didn’t have an answer for that one either, and Eleanor seemed to expect as much, offering him a small, smile before slipping out and closing the door quietly behind her.
Lucas lay back against his pillow once she’d gone, staring up at the ceiling, the weight of everything he hadn’t said pressing down harder than any of the physical wounds he’d taken up to that point.
’She’s right, you know. You’ve always done this. Carried things alone because it felt safer than risking someone else getting hurt over your problems.’
The thought didn’t feel like comfort. It was the truth plainly sitting in front of him.
’If Regression doesn’t work here, there’s no way for me to know. I just have to avoid dying as much as I can...’
He concluded and the thought followed him well past the point sleep should have claimed him.
***
Morning came in grey, the campus quiet in the aftermath of the previous day’s chaos, survivors moving through their routines with a new, wary tension that hadn’t existed before the attack.
Lucas woke earlier than he meant to, the conversation with Eleanor still sitting heavy in his chest, and spent a while simply staring at the ceiling before forcing himself up. Sleep had come eventually, though thin and restless, it had come — a small mercy after everything the previous day had cost him.
He found Eleanor at the edge of the quad, already dressed and ready to move, her black jumpsuit and combat boots re-designed by the fortress’ tailor.
She looked more rested than he felt, but the time had come. No time to be a pussy about it.
"Ready?" she asked.
"As I’ll ever be."
Mark met them there too, looking more solemn than his usual energy suggested. Behind him, a handful of fighters had already gathered near the gate, apparently briefed on their new duties in Eleanor and Lucas’ absence.
"Don’t die," Mark said, mostly to Eleanor, though his eyes flicked briefly to Lucas as well. "Either of you. I mean it. I’m not equipped to run a Goddess-less, Princess-less fortress on my own charisma alone."
"You’ll be fine," Eleanor said, managing a small, genuine smile. "You’ve got this. You always do."
"Yeah, well Just come back. Both of you. I’ve already lost you once, princess. Wasn’t fun at all."
Lucas smiled. A genuine one... Even amidst the tension Mark still tried to be himself.
"We will," he said, "I promise."
"Right. Go be heroic or whatever. I’ll hold down the fort. Literally."
Lucas managed a laugh at that despite everything, and Eleanor turned toward the quad’s edge, toward the street beyond the fortress walls where the system’s map and the beeping red dot. Lucas fell into step beside her.
"Whatever’s out there," she said, glancing sideways at him as they approached the gate, "we handle it together. No solo heroics. No disappearing to fight something alone because you wanted to look cool."
"Deal," Lucas said, even as some quiet, guilty part of him wondered how long he’d actually manage to keep that promise.
They walked out through the gates together, morning light finally breaking weak and pale through the sky, two friends heading toward whatever answer the system had decided to spawn in front of them next.
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