27. Chapter Twenty-Seven

This staircase was, unfortunately, a prime example of how I couldn’t kick Kieran’s ass if my life depended on it.

By the time we’d reached the top, I had to take a moment to catch my breath. Meanwhile, my tour guide hadn’t even broken a sweat, the fit bastard. That wouldn’t stop me from threatening him, though.

“You ready?” he asked, extending a hand. Whether it was to guide me or steady me, I took it, and pretended that the sharp breath I sucked in was just because I was winded. It certainly wasn’t the warmth of his rough fingers against mine, or the comforting nature of his firm grip. Of course not.

The stairway had led all the way to the very top of the wall, offering a birds-eye view of the entire city within, and behind us, the rolling hills and forests of Pyrhhas. It was absolutely breathtaking. I tried to take a moment to pause and enjoy the view, but Kieran tugged at my hand, pulling me towards the Northern Gates. There, two massive limestone walls met at a wide angle, and I felt the surge of aether before I saw anything.

Whoa.

Nestled in between where the two walls met was a massive, floating chunk of crystal, oddly reminiscent of the one from The Mural of Creation. The jagged, uncut gem sat atop what almost looked like a pewter brazier, also floating. Several sigils were carved in the stone beneath it, glowing softly with a blue-green hue—the telltale sign of Aetherborne arcana.

“What is that?” I asked in awe as we approached.

“It’s a wardpoint. They’re made of astral quartz and some rare, arcane conductive ore mined from caverns in Luxtos and Stygos. There’s something about those two materials that can help contain and preserve the specific arcana that the Elders use to place wards. There’s one of these at every corner of Sophrosyne—six in total. The wardpoints make it so that they don’t have to come up and re-cast the protective magicks every other week. Sophrosyne is a pretty big city to keep constantly warded.”

I never really thought about that—hadn’t considered that warding arcana might be so complex that even the Aetherborne couldn’t preserve it with one single cast.

Then again, we had learned that the wards around Sophrosyne weren’t your average elemental barriers. They weren’t like the basic wards a strong Conduit might be able to set up. There were all sorts of alarms and detections woven into our city’s security system, including the one that would only allow you to pass through if you had the arcane tattoo that acted as your key.

“They’re so pretty,” I breathed, entranced by the iridescent shimmer of the astral quartz and the thrumming power of the arcana it clearly contained.

“I figured you might like them. Considering how buckwild you get over normal rocks,” he teased.

I ignored him and the weight of the several “normal” rocks I currently had in my pockets. The pebble I had found on the way here was not alone.

“Though, do me a favor and don’t go around telling people about them, alright?”

“Who would I even tell?” I laughed.

“I dunno. Laurel?”

“Laurel is far more concerned with a different element of Earth at the moment. You might even say she’s lost in the Craggs.”

Kieran snorted, catching my drift.

“I know, I trust you. And while you really aren’t supposed to be up here, it’s not like they’re some particularly dangerous secret. I would just prefer to keep my balls where they are, and my commander would probably feed them to me if he knew I was taking civilians up here.”

“Do you take people up here often?” I asked, trying to mask the disappointment in my voice.

“Nah. Just you,” he replied.

The disappointment dissipated, replaced by a warmth that I tried to ignore.

“I’m surprised that these aren’t one of those secrets that the Aetherborne keep bound by the brand,” I mused.

“Truth be told, I think that’s by design. Anyone who discovers that the wardpoints exist would probably make the assumption that they’re a weakness, right? Most people would default to thinking that if you disable them somehow, you’d take the city wards down.”

“Yeah, that was my assumption. Is that not the case?”

He shook his head.

“The wardpoints preserve the arcana, and thus they store a whole Hel of a lot of it at once, allowing the spellwork to trickle out over time. If anyone were to disable a wardpoint, several things would happen,” he explained, walking around the quartz to examine it from another angle.

“For starters, the Aetherborne would be alerted, and good fucking luck to whatever poor bastard made that poor life decision. But also, disabling the device would simply release all of that stored arcana at once. The wards would get stronger, not weaker—albeit temporarily.”

How fascinating.

“You’d be surprised at how much the Convocation keeps hidden in plain sight,” Kieran said. “Knowledge is power, as is the artful omission of it. Allowing the masses to know most of the truth while withholding some key details is an unfortunate element of public safety.”

A certain darkness passed through his expression as he said that.

“Why is that unfortunate?” I asked, curious about the tinge of bitterness behind those words.

Kieran sighed, leaning over the parapet and gazing off into the distance.

“Call me idealistic, but I don’t like the willful deception.”

“Is it really deception, though? It’s certainly not malicious,” I replied, interested in his perspective.

“A lie by omission is still a lie,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t know, I’m certainly not one to talk here, but…”

I tilted my head, listening intently.

“There are a lot of things that I know about Sophrosyne that most of the general public doesn’t know, Arken. Things that most of this city will never know, and it can get burdensome at times.”

I had a feeling that we weren’t just talking about the wardpoints, now. I had always suspected Kieran’s job was… intense. It was written in his scars, the way he carried himself, the way that he held almost anyone at an arm’s length. I couldn’t pretend to understand, but I wanted to.

“I guess I just don’t like the assumption that the rest of the city—this city, of all places—can’t be trusted with a clearer picture. It’s not that I think everyone should know everything, but…”

Kieran took pause, glancing at me before returning his gaze to the skyline. As if he were second-guessing his next words, unaccustomed to saying things like this out loud.

“Do you remember what you asked me that day? When you learned about the details of the Cataclysm?”

I nodded. I only remembered because I had been embarrassed about that emotional outburst later, the one that had come up as I feverishly discussed my thoughts on the lecture that day.

“Why do they keep it a secret?”I had asked. I had been angry, in the heat of the moment, thinking about all the times I had heard mortals speak ill of the Aetherborne, pissing and moaning about how the gods were useless these days. “Don’t you think that mortals might behave a little differently if they knew the full truth of things? Don’t you think things might change if they knew what the survival of our species had cost the Elders?”

The way Kieran had looked at me then was similar to the way he was looking at me now. Like he saw me in full. Like he understood. I had never met anyone else who looked at me like that when I spoke.

“I remember,” I said softly.

“Sometimes, I just have to wonder whether or not it’s always for the best. We keep so much hidden for the sake of safety, and I often wonder if the ends always justify the means by which we do so.”

I didn’t need much of an imagination to gather what those means might be.

“Sometimes, I wonder if given the chance, the people of Sophrosyne—of Atlas, in general, really—if we could just do better.”

I tore my gaze from the glimmering wardpoint, walking over to join him at the parapet and taking in the gorgeous view at his side as I reflected on his uncommon philosophical musings.

From this high up, I could see almost the entirety of the Wyldwoods, the tips of those towering trees bending gently in the breeze. Just past the forestry, I saw where the Pyrhhan Strait cut through the region, threading out into an estuary by the rocky coastline to the west. The sun was just beginning to make its late afternoon descent, casting the sky in hues of pink and orange, the wispy clouds above looking like handspun sugar floss.

“I’d like to think that we could,” I finally said after a couple minutes of silence. “Do better, I mean. Given the chance.”

“Maybe I’m just a hopeless idealist, but I’d like to think so too, Ark,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the skyline.

If Kieran was an idealist, then so was I. No matter how many well-documented centuries of greed and warfare existed in the histories of mankind, I did believe that we were inherently good, or at least that the goodness outweighed the wicked in us all. I also believed that much of those conflicts were born from disparities that could have been mended peacefully if more people had access to the resources they needed.

I could see now why even some willful omissions of truth might bother Kieran, considering he so clearly believed in the core message of Sophrosyne, that knowledge is power. To omit access to that power was to leave gaps in our defenses in favor of artificial walls, operating under the assumption that we couldn’t handle or behave ourselves.

I was sure that, in his mind, keeping certain secrets felt like failing to protect his people, because he was failing to prepare them… And I truly couldn’t imagine what that weight felt like.

“I’d like to think so, too,” he repeated, this time glancing back at me.

Something in his gaze felt distant, unreadable in a haunting sort of way. Like his body was here in Sophrosyne, acting as an anchor to his mind as it floated off in the distance, to some place that was very, very far away.

I probably should have found that unsettling, but instead I just felt drawn to it.

Like I wanted to join him there.