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EC Book 4, Chapter 16 - Setbacks
🕑 Added 2024-03-12 15:44:09 +0000 UTCA few things were immediately clear to Sev.
One was that Solar and the new phoenix had something of a bond. The bird had certainly imprinted on him when he'd picked it up — it had been comfortable enough to fall asleep in his arms, and that meant something — but there was something more in what it shared with Solar. It chirped at him, then hopped from Sev's hand into Solar's.
"I am not sure I would call a phoenix a pet," Solar said, gently stroking a finger down the back of the bird's neck. "But... you are offering her to me?"
"She seems to like you," Sev said. "I'm going to be honest, I don't think I'll be able to take care of a baby phoenix. Misa and I have a lot to do if we want to keep this universe intact, and that's not exactly a fight I want to take a baby to, even if it's a divine creature."
"That is sensible," Solar admitted. "I am not certain I am the right person for her."
"You are." Sev smiled a little. "Besides, I can't think of anyone else that could feed her. I guess I could ask you to come with us, but..."
Solar withdrew immediately, holding the phoenix close to his chest. "...I would rather not," he said softly. He didn't take his gaze away from the phoenix.
"There we go, then," Sev said. "You take care of her, and we'll come back if we need her or your help with something. How's that sound?"
"That is... acceptable." Solar took a breath, glancing around at the rooftop again. After a moment, he smiled, though Sev couldn't exactly see it in the brightness of his form. "Thank you both for showing me what I was missing."
"And now you can't keep yourself locked away 'cause you have a baby to look after," Misa said, grinning broadly. The grin vanished after a moment. "Seriously, though, don't keep her locked away."
"I will not," Solar said, sounding a bit offended. "But... I still may not be able to come out frequently. Your Blessing will not last forever, Sev."
"Right." Sev frowned slightly, turning his attention toward what his [Divine Manipulation] skill was telling him. "It won't, but... I don't think it has to. The phoenix is already kind of maintaining the Blessing for you."
"It is?" Solar's words came out as a hopeful whisper.
"Yeah." It had been subtle enough for him not to notice it immediately, and since there hadn't been a change in the power of the Blessing, he hadn't noticed any increase in heat, either. "It's been slowly taking over the Blessing. Claiming it as its own divine domain, so to speak."
"...It seems I must thank you, little one," Solar murmured after a moment, cradling the phoenix close; it let out a happy chirp, and the sun elemental smiled once again.
"We'll head back inside first," Misa suggested. "I'm guessing you're going to want to enjoy the rooftop of a little longer."
"If you would not mind," Solar said. He didn't look at either of them, too busy feeding the phoenix another small pellet of fire-aspect magic. Sev chuckled a little bit, then followed Misa to the stairwell.
The door shut behind them with a quiet click, leaving the sun elemental staring out at the city, a small phoenix held in his arms.
—
"We've got a problem," Sev said.
"Don't tell me you want to take the phoenix back," Misa said. "You just gave to to the guy! You'll break his heart."
"What? No, I'm not talking about the phoenix!" Sev said, a little flustered; Misa smirked at him, and after a second, he laughed. "Dammit, Misa."
"So what's the problem?" she asked.
"It's the Grand Anchor beneath Anderstahl," Sev said with a sigh. "It's kind of a long story, but I spent a lot of time reading through my old manuscripts and trying to figure out what we need to fix things. Our best bet is going to be the Grand Anchors."
"The one Vex has?" Misa frowned. "What is that thing, anyway?"
"It's like... a bigger, better version of a reality anchor," Sev said, waving a hand vaguely. "I built it to permanently anchor fundamental aspects of reality. Like pinning down the corners of a blanket instead of patching up all the holes."
"I don't think that metaphor works the way you want it to work," Misa said dryly. "But I'm following you so far. I'm still not seeing a problem. Sounds like you have a way out for us."
"There's two, actually," Sev said, sighing. "One of them is that I think you're going to need to host one of the Grand Anchors, and you've kind of already got an entire reality anchor taking up a slot in your system."
"And I'm guessing switching from one to the other isn't going to be simple," Misa said, frowning. "Especially with all the people connected to my anchor so far."
"Yep." Sev grimaced a bit as he paced. "The second problem is the third Grand Anchor. I made three of them."
"One for each of the Prime Kingdoms," Misa acknowledged.
"And one of the Prime Kingdoms is missing," Sev said. "I don't know if that last Grand Anchor even exists anymore, Misa."
"Can't you just build it?" Misa asked. She stopped in the middle of the stairwell, looking at Sev with concern. "I'm guessing you can't."
"I can't." Sev shook his head. "Or, well, I can, but there wouldn't be a point in building another one. The way those Grand Anchors work is by recording and analyzing reality at a fundamental level every time we have to perform a Reset. We don't have any more Resets we can do. I don't know how we're going to get that last Anchor, if it's even still there, and I'm terrified that after all this work I'm going to lose the last piece we need to save the universe just because I didn't—"
"Sev." Misa interrupted him, her voice strong; Sev realized a little belatedly that he'd started to panic. His breath was coming in hard and fast, and he'd been the first one to stop in the stairwell. He was gripping the railing with a too-tight grip that left his knuckles white, and he saw Misa's gaze linger on his hand.
He let go, embarrassed.
"Sev, I'm not gonna tell you it'll be fine," she continued. "But I am gonna say that it doesn't matter. Either it's there or it's not. It's not our primary concern right now, even."
"It's not?" Sev asked, confused.
"No." Misa shook her head, then gestured roughly toward the stairwell that surrounded them. "You mentioned Anderstahl's Prime Anchor is malfunctioning too, right? And we need to fix it?"
"Right..." Sev said slowly. He looked around — he didn't see anything wrong with the stairwell. Why was Misa pointing at it?
"Which means stuff in Anderstahl is going to be weird sometimes," Misa said. "Because their Anchor is falling apart."
"I feel like you're going somewhere with this, but I'd really rather you just told me," Sev grumbled.
"We've been walking past the same stairwell for the past ten minutes," Misa told him bluntly. "I thought maybe they just mislabeled the floor number at first, but no. We're stuck here. So whatever form of malfunction this Prime Anchor is experiencing, it's very different from Elyra's, and we gotta get to the Anderstahl dungeon fast."
Sev stared at the floor number, then poked his head over the railing to try to peer down to the first floor. All he saw was an endless stretch of staircase that eventually faded into black.
He felt his pulse pick up, and he stumbled backward into Misa, who quickly caught him.
"This is kind of a bad time to realize I never really got over my fear of heights," Sev muttered. Misa chuckled a little at that, but her glance down at the endless staircase held the same amount of concern he felt in his heart.
This... was definitely going to be a problem.
—
Sev sat in a corner of the stairwell. In front of him, Misa paced back and forth, wearing grooves into the stone.
"It's not an attack, so I can't block it," she muttered. "We've tried breaking through the stone, and it just leads to more stairs. Neither of our systems are working and we can't get into contact with our friends so they can get us out of here."
"Yep, that sounds about right," Sev said. "Oh, and we have no food or water."
"And we have no food or water." Misa growled a little. "I can't even figure out what's going on in this place using Endless Echoes. It doesn't matter what I try to change, we just end up back in the stupid stairwell." She punched the wall, her Strength stat enough to shatter the stone and break open another hole that just... led to more staircase. Sev stared at the hole, then at Misa, who sighed and sat down next to him.
"Sorry," she said after a moment. "I let myself get a little stressed there."
"I mean, you stopped me from falling off the railing," Sev said with a laugh. "What am I gonna do, complain that you're a little mad about being trapped in a staircase?"
"There's something here we're missing." Misa's eyes narrowed. "Anchors don't do things for no reason. When they malfunction, it's almost always because something stops working. This isn't that. This is an effect being applied here, to us."
"Right." Sev ganced up at Misa. "...You said earlier that you found a new function of [An Anchor of Heart and Home]?"
"I did." Misa grinned a bit. "Turns out that I can borrow classes from the people in either Fendal or J'rokksur. Not something I can do easily, but I can do it. And the last thing I borrowed was the [Intuitionist] class from my mom, so right now I'm dual classing."
"And the class is telling you something."
"Yup." Misa glanced around. "I'm just not as used to this class as Mom is. It's easy enough when it comes to reading people, but trying to figure out what's going on here is completely different. It's like there's a damn itch in my brain."
"It's not the Void," Sev said. "We've been in that place. The Void kind of gives up on the entire concept of distance and movement, but there's a kind of logic to it—when there's nothing there, our minds dictate how it works."
Misa nodded. "Which is why we just kind of drift around in whatever direction we're thinking when we're in Void," she said. She grinned suddenly. "Remember the first time we fell into the Void and Vex just immediately crashed into Derivan?"
Sev snickered. "You know, I hadn't thought about that, but he must've been thinking about the big guy, huh?"
"Thinking hard, too." Misa relaxed a little bit, leaning back and using the wall as leverage to crack her spine; she groaned as it popped, then glanced around again, her eyes a little sharper. "...Speaking of which, I think I got it."
"Yeah?" Sev asked, glancing up at her. Something in her tone made her grip his staff warily, and he glanced around, expecting something to pop out at them.
"It's not that space is falling apart," Misa said. "Or that the Prime Anchor is failing to maintain something crucial in this random staircase in the middle of Anderstahl.
"It's that the Prime Anchor thinks this stairwell is part of its dungeon, so it's given us a fucking puzzle."
