Chapter 18

Venus

The next morning, I was walking on a cloud. Despite the countless times we'd gotten frisky together, last night took our relationship to another level. Emotionally, I was fully invested. That he and I would spend the rest of our lives together was no longer a hypothetical based on Kayog's assertion that we were soulmates. The bond that formed between us was entirely of our own doing.

I wanted a future with that man. And the only way to guarantee it required beating this damn cataclysm.

That determination allowed me not to feel so bummed out that we had to socialize. In these early days of our relationship, the selfish part of me wanted for us to remain isolated, basking in each other's presence, and strengthening the bond uniting us.

As I loved a good mystery, especially one that would result in saving countless lives once resolved, I didn't balk at the task laid before me.

Today again, Atlas carried me in his arms as we flew to Keryth Valley. Obviously, I didn't want to ride that nightmarish giant bug they called a Valren. However, I had to admit that, even without my bug phobia, I would have still chosen to be carried by my man instead. A lifetime wouldn't suffice for me to tire of his gentle embrace, the unusual feel of his scales against my skin, and his delectable scent.

Atlas made me feel protected and cherished.

As we began our descent in the valley, I spotted the dark silhouettes of two more guards in the distance flying towards the beacon. Throughout the day, we intended to perform the magic absorption test on at least eight guards, and another seven tomorrow, based on the results we got during this first round. A mix of hope and worry battled in equal measure within me.

Finding a solution to Thaudras was no longer just a matter of avoiding a genocide. The future I was hoping to build with Atlas depended on it. I refused to be widowed any time soon. But what if what happened with Atlas was a fluke? No, that wasn't the right word. What if his situation couldn't be replicated because the Prism's blessing gave him a special edge?

I doubted this was the case. After all, Xarin gave me that vision with Acamon standing next to Atlas right here by the Sibris. It meant he also had a role to play. I just couldn't wait to figure out what it was. Unfortunately, Acamon couldn't be here today due to prior engagements. Despite my impatience, I welcomed the delay. The surest way to fail was to have too many irons in the fire at the same time. Figuring out the situation with the Blacks first constituted a significant enough undertaking that would require my full attention.

As soon as we landed, I whipped out my scanner freshly calibrated with new parameters provided by the Enforcers' nuclear engineering team. It would hopefully help me detect other anomalies like the one Xarin pointed us to the first time, allowing Atlas to achieve such a high magic casting performance.

Focusing on my task, I activated the device. In seconds, four different spots appeared on the interface. They surrounded the beacon, but not at an equal distance and without any obvious pattern justifying their position.

I glanced up in the direction of the closest one. To my shock, Atlas was already heading straight for it. He'd spread his wings wide instead of neatly folded like a cape behind him as he usually kept them. The eyespots glowed, not as intensely as when he drafted pure magic the last time, but enough to hint he was either trying to channel the pure magic emanating from the nearby beacon, or the magic itself was latching on to him, eager to be used.

Fascinated, I observed him quietly as he continued to advance towards the first spot. His antennae oscillated as he looked ahead with an air of deep concentration. The closer he got to the location marked on my scanner, the brighter his eyespots glowed.

Oh God! He can sense it!

Last time, he hadn't been aware of the presence of an anomaly until I made him stand right on top of it. Now, I couldn't tell if he felt it as soon as we landed, or if he actively tried to detect it on his own. He stopped right in the middle of the location on my scanner, then turned to look at me with an air of wonder.

"This area is similar to the one I stood on during our last visit," he said.

I nodded. "It is. I was just about to tell you to go there, but you found it on your own."

He shook his head. "It called to me, like a giant magnet drawing me in."

My jaw dropped, even as a wave of excitement bubbled within me. "That didn't happen before, right?"

He shook his head again. "No. I've never felt this pull before. I can sense at least two more not too far from here," he added, pointing in the direction of two of the remaining three spots detected by my scanner.

The one he didn't seem to perceive sat the farthest away from our position.

"I wonder what triggered that response," I mused aloud.

So many things occurred over the past few weeks, changing him in a way that would be impossible to fully replicate in a clinical setting. Atlas had stopped drinking myrdin tea for twelve days now. He'd been fully embracing his sexuality, which was clearly reflected in the hormonal levels of his latest blood works. Xarin's blessing made him more receptive to magic. And he'd already interacted with the pure magic of the beacons. Maybe his muscle memory was kicking in, or maybe he'd developed new muscles or affinities since our first experiment.

"I don't know," he replied absent-mindedly before heading towards the second closest spot.

He reached it seconds before Pythus landed near us. We exchanged the usual greetings and updated him as to what was happening.

"Do you feel anything?" I asked Pythus. "Some kind of pull towards the location where Atlas is standing?"

He shook his head. "No. I feel nothing."

"Come stand here," Atlas commanded, gesturing for him to approach.

Pythus complied. No sooner did he enter the affected area than his eyes widened. His eyespots—a darker shade of gray than Atlas's had been before the Prism's blessing—started to glow.

"Whoa! That's different," Pythus whispered with an air of wonder.

Leodros joined us just at that moment. Unlike the other two males, Leodros had brown eyespots. From my observations of the other guards since my arrival on Sylvar, shades of grays—from very light to very dark—were most common for the Blacks' eyespots. But a few of them had also displayed shades of beige to brown, and variations of reds—the latter being the rarest. Therefore, while Atlas and Pythus could invoke lightning, Leodros could reshape the ground and petrify living objects.

Atlas and I explained in detail the experiment we previously performed and repeated it with both of his guards standing in the same area. Although neither male displayed the same level of power Atlas did—likely because of the blessing—they significantly weakened the flow of pure magic coming out of the beacon, as well as displayed nearly triple their normal power when casting spells.

Individually, none of them could dampen the magic of the beacon by more than ten percent. But when used simultaneously, their combined abilities reduced it by thirty-five percent. The compounded effect couldn't be denied. Atlas's words came back to mind regarding the fact that without at least five Blacks and five Whites, the region affected by Thaudras would suffer major damage, but that ten of each would be the ideal scenario.

With five Blacks, the magic of the beacon would drop by at least fifty percent. With ten, it would fully stop it.

But that magic is clean. There's no radiation.

And that confirmed we still didn't have the full picture. Nevertheless, this undeniably constituted one of the keys to unlocking this mystery. I just couldn't figure out what role the Monochromatics and Whites played in it.

We repeated the test with the other candidates as they arrived. To avoid drawing too much attention to what we were doing, we had people trickle in at different times. A crowd of Achromatics by the beacon after days of many of them visiting the very house sheltering the Prism would stir even more grumbling.

Frankly, I expected Ajustus to come barging in with self-righteous anger that we dared defile the home of the Prism with the unwashed masses of inferior beings. Considering the number of people who loudly and belligerently gathered outside the mansion during those visits, there was no way the news hadn't reached the Chancellor. So why did he remain quiet?

He's plotting something.

And that scared me more than I would ever admit. I'd take the enemy I can see any day over the threat that lurked in the shadows, ready to strike when you least expected it.

After the last guard departed, I launched a new probe, modified according to the Enforcers' specifications to turn it into an extractor—a sample collection device. Contrary to my initial assessment, it wasn't intense heat messing with the first probe I sent, but the strange magnetic field that powered the entire planet. That also answered some of my questions as to how the ‘sacrificed' managed to linger in the bowels of Thaudras long enough to stop it.

I launched the extractor inside the crater of the beacon. Within thirty minutes, it returned with its belly full of the bugs hiding underground. Although no warnings went off on the interface of my bracer controlling the extractor, I still placed a deployable biohazard container on the ground. I moved to a safe distance and directed the extractor to settle inside before remotely sealing it.

You could never be too careful with this stuff.

On our way home, we made a detour by Kyrene's research lab. I seriously hesitated about bringing the container straight to her. This technology was far too advanced to be left in their hands. But at this point, I'd stepped over the line of the Prime Directive so many times this constituted a truly minor offense. Anyway, as I would reclaim it in the morning before heading back to Keryth, they wouldn't have enough time to attempt to properly reverse engineer it.

That said, I suspected Kyrene would be far more interested in the contents of the extractor than in the container itself. She would be the first Promethean in history to hold one of these bugs still alive.

The next morning, her assistant didn't make a fuss handing me back the extractor. When I expressed my surprise at not seeing Kyrene, she explained the scientist worked through the night, and the team all but dragged her kicking and screaming to bed. They needed her focused and functional if they were to win this race against the clock.

Back in Keryth Valley, we resumed the process with more of Atlas's Black Guards. By then, it was mostly to assess how the Blacks with different colored eyespots reacted. In all cases, his warriors benefited from the same boost in power.

However, I was stunned when three of them turned out to be females. It shamed me to have automatically assumed that, since Prometheans were a primitive species, their elite protection forces would have been exclusively male—a very narrow-minded misconception on my part. It was all the more embarrassing that Linsea reassured me on the role of females in the Promethean society. After all, here the potency of your magic defined your power, not your physical strength.

And then Acamon came.

I felt a little guilty to be this excited about it. Nothing so far gave us any hint as to what the role of the Whites could be. But that Xarin specifically requested his presence told me that we were about to get another juicy piece of the puzzle. I wished he could simply tell me what we were looking for. Then again, a part of me wondered if maybe he also didn't know, and only strongly felt there was some sort of connection.

I stood mesmerized as Acamon flew down towards us. If not for his butterfly wings instead of bird wings, he would have truly resembled an angel descending from the heavens. They shone under the bright rays of the sun at its zenith, giving him a divine halo. There was something beautiful, mysterious, but also dangerous about that male that would have many ovaries exploding in his mere presence. His aura of authority and the barely contained power that seemed to exude out of his every pore made him even more attractive.

Was I not falling head over heels for my Atlas, I could have seen myself falling for this male.

The other two Whites who came to our house to be tested had contrasted their ivory complexion with a colorful tarp where the color matching their eyespots dominated. Unlike them, Acamon stuck to entirely white outfits, like the rest of him. He was so pale compared to the others that a part of me wondered if he had a form of albinism. However, the molecular genetic tests the medical module performed on him didn't indicate it. I couldn't tell if it was because he truly didn't have albinism or because our limited knowledge of Promethean biology failed to identify such markers.

He landed gracefully near Atlas.

We exchanged a few pleasantries then asked him the same questions as the others, whether he felt the presence of the anomalies. The depth of the disappointment that struck me when he said no took me aback. For some reason, I'd expected him to have some kind of a sixth sense that would have made everything fall into place.

Atlas led him to one of the special areas. Like the previous candidates, he immediately felt a shift the moment he entered that zone. His lips parted in shock and a small gasp escaped him. To my surprise, he jerked his head left and right, as if looking for something or someone.

"What's wrong? What are you looking for?" Atlas asked, echoing the questions that popped into my own mind.

"Did you have other Whites here before me?" Acamon asked instead of responding.

Atlas frowned with a confusion that reflected mine. "No. You're the first we've asked to join us here. Why do you ask?"

"This is a vortex," he said, waving at the area beneath him. "We teach young Whites how to create them to help focus their magic for long and complex tasks. But we also use it to boost the output of the low-level Monos who live among us."

"Oh, my God! You create these?!" I exclaimed, excitement bubbling inside me.

He glanced at me with a sliver of amusement at my enthusiasm. "We do, although not as massive as this one," he added with a slight frown as he glanced around us. "Such a large focus radius would take a long time to implement—at least twenty minutes. But it also wouldn't last more than a couple of hours unless it was steadily fed. If you say these have been here for days, then there is something maintaining it."

"The bugs?" Atlas asked.

I nodded pensively. "I guess it could be a possibility. But why only in these specific areas and not over the entire valley? They also seem to only have a positive impact. So are they related in any way to Thaudras? I just wish there had been more recordings of this phenomenon for us to be able to establish any pattern about their appearance in relation to Thaudras."

Acamon's frown deepened as he seemed lost in thought for a moment. "Polychromatics would have felt it but likely not made particular note of it. Standing in the presence of the Sibris naturally heightens our magic casting abilities. As Polychromatics are always widely open to drafting colors, their enhanced ability to channel pure magic here wouldn't strike them as odd. But for Monos and Achros, whose drafting powers are quite limited, the difference is extremely notable."

Atlas nodded. "As our presence here isn't legally banned but strongly frowned upon, we avoid these areas. This would explain why there are likely no actual records of it. The Black Guards are pretty much the only Achromatics who come here for security during large events. But we always remain on the outskirts, as discreet as possible."

I pinched my lips in anger at this ridiculous treatment they received. And yet, I couldn't hate the Polychromatics for it as we'd had a similar shameful history on ancient Earth.

"So you say that making such a large focus area would take about twenty minutes," I mused aloud, forcing myself to refocus on more constructive topics. "But if multiple Whites—say five of them—combined their efforts on a single area, could you reduce that time accordingly?"

Atlas's eyes widened with sudden understanding. "Like combining the Blacks' powers quickly dampens the output of the Sibris!"

I smiled at him with approval that he was quickly reading between the lines. If it came to that, I would break the Prime Directive rules to help them find a solution. But so long as I could simply drop hints and let them figure it out, I would continue to toe the line. Secretly, though, I was steadily growing more and more impressed with Atlas's analytical skills. It boggled my mind how much he underestimated himself—no doubt due to a lifetime of being told he was less than. But my man was super smart. I would make sure to point it out to him until he finally acknowledged just how awesome he was.

Acamon first narrowed his eyes, then a slow smile stretched his lips. "Yes, with five high-level Whites, we could create an area of this radius in a couple of minutes. Five Blacks would need to stand within that radius to benefit from it. But that wouldn't be quite effective in the long run if the goal was to counter something within the Thaudras well."

"Why is that?" I asked, my shoulders slouching a bit.

"Because the cataclysm spreads over a vast area," Atlas responded in his stead. "We would need to be able to move around to deal with it. Considering the speed at which it spreads—at least based on the lore on this topic—having to wait for the Whites to create a new vortex every few meters for us to move to would be impractical. How long would these vortices even last?"

"Built this way, barely a couple of minutes," Acamon said with a dismissive gesture. "It would be a bad idea. But for something like that, it would be better to pair one White with one Black and cast focused pure magic directly on them."

Atlas and I both froze.

"We can generate a halo of pure magic like the Sibris," Acamon said with a sheepish expression. "Obviously, not to this magnitude, and it's not something we do too often. We normally keep it to very specific situations to punctually boost a Monochromatic. But as we have to remain next to them the whole time, it is simpler to just create a vortex so they can do their work at their own pace, and we can go about our business in the meantime."

"Why did none of us know about this?" Atlas asked, stunned.

"We avoid speaking of our abilities to others," Acamon said in a slightly defensive tone. "People fear us enough as is. It would be stupid for us to give them even more reasons to do so."

"Right," Atlas conceded, though he still seemed a bit troubled by it.

I couldn't blame him. As the head of security of an entire city, it had to be unnerving to realize he knew far less about the extent of a possible threat's power than he thought.

Acamon's face hardened. "We are not a threat, Atlas," he said in an icy tone, as if he'd read the thoughts crossing my mind.

Atlas recoiled. His shock appeared to instantly mollify Acamon.

"I know, my friend," Atlas said in an appeasing tone. "I'm just shocked and ashamed to realize just how little I know of our own people. Considering I grew up alongside Whites, I should know this."

Acamon's stance relaxed, and he smiled. "There's no reason to be ashamed. We've made it a point to limit how many people know. It just confirms we've been doing it right."

"So it seems," Atlas replied teasingly before taking on a serious expression. "Would you use this ability on me?"

"Certainly," Acamon replied.

He immediately raised his palms, and the silver eyespots of his wings began glowing. But Atlas raised his palm in an arresting gesture.

"No. Not here. I don't want this current vortex to affect the result," he said.

Another wave of pride surged within me. Once again, my man was showing an analytical mind that I doubted he even realized he possessed. Acamon nodded and followed him out of the affected area. I merely smiled, content to tag along while they sorted it out themselves.

Once at a far enough distance, Atlas signaled for him to proceed. At first, Acamon moving behind Atlas surprised me, but then his reason became apparent. As Prometheans drafted color and magic through their wings, standing behind him gave him access to a broader surface not blocked by his body.

I watched, mesmerized, as Acamon started summoning pure magic. The eyespots in his wings pulsated with a bright glow while the rest of his wings seemed to be lit up from within. His entire being seemed to be illuminated by the light emitted by his wings. In that instant, he truly resembled a divine apparition. And then his halo—the magic harvested by his wings—shot out of his palms like a white beam aimed straight at Atlas.

It was as if the beam struck a wall the moment it entered in contact with his dark wings. They absorbed it greedily, and their own eyespots began to glow. Whatever fear I might have held at the prospect this could harm Atlas instantly vanished. The look of wonder—not to say of bliss—on his face had my excitement cranking up another notch.

And then he raised his palms and launched a lightning bolt so powerful it sounded like a bomb had gone off. Large chunks of rocks and dirt flew up at least four meters in the air before raining back down. Had he not targeted such a large distance from us, the debris undoubtedly would have hurt us.

Both men gasped and stopped what they were doing before staring in disbelief at what their combined powers achieved. Atlas stared at his hands in shock before glancing over his shoulder at his friend with rounded eyes. The same shock and awe were plastered all over Acamon's face.

"Am I to understand boosting another person has never yielded such a powerful response?" I asked carefully.

Acamon shook his head, his eyes still glued to my man. "No, never. Then again we never used it with a Black. There was no reason since they nullify magic. We need to try this again!"

"Definitely," Atlas said, a savage grin settling on his sensuous lips.

The two of them spent the next hour using their combined abilities. Thanks to the blessing Xarin gave him, Atlas wasn't limited to casting gray magic—which mainly revolved around electricity and lightning—but any magic thanks to the now white rims of his eyespots.

It was like watching two kids in a toy store as they went on experimenting with him casting everything from earth, fire, water, and even life magic. They did it while moving around at varying speeds and even in crouching positions. By the time we called it a day, we knew we had found the key weapon to help us win the incoming war.

"We must pair all the mature Whites available with my Black Guards," Atlas said in a commanding tone. "We must take advantage of the next few weeks we have left for this to become second nature for each team."

"Agreed," Acamon said in just as decisive a tone. "I will draft the list and talk to my people. We should be able to begin training in the next couple of days."

"Perfect. We're going to beat this thing, brother. I can feel it in my bones," Atlas said.

"We're going to beat it, for this generation and all the others to come," Acamon replied.

My throat tightened when the two men clasped each other's forearm in a ‘handshake' reminiscent of the way ancient Romans used to greet each other. What wrecked me was the glimmer of genuine hope in their eyes. These two exceptional beings spent their entire lives being reminded they would be sacrificed before they reached their thirty-fifth birthday. But today, there was a real chance they would get to live to an old age.

The deep gratitude visible on Acamon's face when he glanced back my way to bid his goodbyes turned me upside down. While I helped get us to this point, the merit mostly rested on their shoulders and on the Prism for pointing us in the right direction. I was merely the messenger.

I could only wonder why he had not communicated this to his previous Prima or Primus. Had these anomalies not occurred back then? Had the person supposed to speak for him ignored or misinterpreted his request? Had they followed it but failed to solve the riddle?

Chances were that those questions would never be answered. It didn't matter. We were on the right path. We would find the solution. Like Atlas, I could feel it in my bones.