“No I’m not—” Evil Earth, so much for your fond memories. “Go on with the rusting lesson.”
He seems more relieved by the change of subject than you. “So that’s what Fulcrum training does to you. You learn to think of orogeny as a matter of effort, when it’s really… perspective. And perception.”
An Allia-shaped trauma tells you why the Fulcrum wouldn’t have wanted every two-shard feral reaching for any obelisks nearby. But you spend a moment trying to understand the distinction he’s explaining. It’s true that using energy is something entirely different from using magic. The Fulcrum’s method makes orogeny feel like what it is: straining to shove around heavy objects, just with will instead of hands or levers. Magic, though, feels effortless—at least while one is using it. The exhaustion comes later. In the moment, though, it is simply about knowing it’s there. Training yourself to see it.
“I don’t understand why they did this,” you say, tapping your fingers on the mattress in thought. The Fulcrum was built by orogenes. At least some of them, at some point in the past, must have sessed magic. But… you shiver as you understand. Ah, yes. The most powerful orogenes, the ones who detect magic most easily and perhaps have trouble mastering energy redistribution as a result, are the ones who end up in the nodes.
Alabaster thinks in bigger pictures than just the Fulcrum. “I think,” he says, “they understood the danger. Not just that roggas who lacked the necessary fine control would connect to obelisks and die, but that some might do it successfully—for the wrong reasons.”
You try to think of a right reason to activate a network of ancient death machines. Alabaster reads your face. “I doubt I’m the first rogga who’s wanted to tip the Fulcrum into a lava pit.”
“Good point.”
“And the war. Don’t ever forget that. The Guardians who work with the Fulcrum are one of the factions I told you about, so to speak. They’re the ones who want the status quo: roggas made safe and useful, stills doing all the work and thinking they run the place, Guardians actually in charge of everything. Controlling the people who can control natural disasters.”
You’re surprised by this. No, you’re surprised you didn’t think of it yourself. But then you haven’t spent much time thinking about Guardians, when you weren’t in the immediate vicinity of one. Maybe this is another kind of thought aversion you’ve been conditioned to: Don’t look up, and don’t think about those damned smiles.
You decide to make yourself think about them now. “But Guardians die during a Season…” Shit. “They say they die…” Shit. “Of course they don’t.”
Alabaster lets out a rusty sound that might be a laugh. “I’m a bad influence.”
He always has been. You can’t help smiling, though the feeling doesn’t last, because of the conversation. “They don’t join comms, though. They must go somewhere else to ride it out.”
“Maybe. Maybe this ‘Warrant’ place. No one seems to know where it is.” He pauses, grows thoughtful. “I suppose I should have asked mine about that before I left her.”
No one just leaves their Guardian. “You said you didn’t kill her.”
He blinks, out of memory. “No. I cured her. Sort of. You know about the thing in their heads.” Yes. Blood, and the sting of your palm. Schaffa handing something tiny and bloody to another Guardian, with great care. You nod. “It gives them their abilities, but it also taints them, twists them. The seniors at the Fulcrum used to speak of it in whispers. There are degrees of contamination…” He sets his jaw, visibly steering himself away from that topic. You can guess why. Somewhere along the way, it lands on the shirtless Guardians who kill with a touch. “Anyway, I took that thing out of mine.”
You swallow. “I saw a Guardian kill another once, taking it out.”
“Yes. When the contamination becomes too great. Then they’re dangerous even to other Guardians, and must be purged. I’d heard they weren’t gentle about it. Brutes even to their own.”
It’s angry, Guardian Timay had said, right before Schaffa killed her. Readying for the time of return. You inhale. The memory is vivid in your mind because that was the day that you and Tonkee—Binof—found the socket. The day of your first ring test, early and with your life in the balance. You’ll never forget anything of that day. And now—“It’s the Earth.”
“What?”
“The thing that’s in Guardians. The… contaminant.” It changed those who would control it. Chained them fate to fate. “She started speaking for the Earth!”
You can tell you’ve actually surprised him, for once. “Then…” He considers for a moment. “I see. That’s when they switch teams. Stop working for the status quo and Guardian interests, and start working for the Earth’s interests instead. No wonder the others kill them.”
This is what you need to understand. “What does the Earth want?”
Alabaster’s gaze is heavy, heavy. “What does any living thing want, facing an enemy so cruel that it stole away a child?”
Your jaw tightens. Vengeance.
You shift down from the cot to the floor, leaning against the cot’s frame. “Tell me about the Obelisk Gate.”
“Yes. I thought that would get you interested.” Alabaster’s voice has gone soft again, but there is a look on his face that makes you think, This is what he looked like on the day he made the Rift. “You remember the basic principle. Parallel scaling. Yoking two oxen together instead of one. Two roggas together can do more than each individually. It works for obelisks, too, just… exponential. A matrix, not a yoke. Dynamic.”
Okay, you’re following so far. “So I need to figure out how to chain all of them together.”
He nods back minutely. “And you’ll need a buffer, at least initially. When I opened the Gate at Yumenes, I used several dozen node maintainers.”
Several dozen stunted, twisted roggas turned into mindless weapons… and Alabaster somehow turned them against their owners. How like him, and how perfect. “Buffer?”
“To cushion the impact. To… smooth out the connection flow…” He falters, sighs. “I don’t know how to explain it. You’ll know when you try it.”
When. He assumes so much. “What you did killed the node maintainers?”
“Not precisely. I used them to open the Gate and create the Rift… and then they tried to do what they were made to do: Stop the shake. Stabilize the land.” You grimace, understanding. Even you, in your extremity, weren’t foolish enough to try to stop the shockwave, when it reached Tirimo. The only safe thing to do was divert its force elsewhere. But node maintainers lack the mind or control to do the safe thing.
“I didn’t use all of them,” Alabaster says thoughtfully. “The ones far to the west and in the Arctics and Antarctics were out of my reach. Most have died since. No one to keep them alive. But I can still sess active nodes in a few places. Remnants of the network: south, near the Antarctic Fulcrum, and north, near Rennanis.”
Of course he can sess active nodes all the way in the Antarctics. You can barely sess a hundred miles from Castrima, and you have to work to stretch that far. And maybe the roggas of the Antarctic Fulcrum have survived somehow, and chosen to care for their less fortunate brethren in the nodes, but… “Rennanis?” That can’t be. It’s an Equatorial city. More southerly and westerly than most; people in Yumenes thought it was only a step above any other Somidlats backwater. But Rennanis was Equatorial enough that it should be gone.
“The Rift wends northwesterly, along an ancient fault line that I found. It swung a few hundred miles wide of Rennanis… I suppose that was enough to let the node maintainers actually do something. Should’ve killed most of them, and the rest should’ve died of neglect when their staffs abandoned them, but I don’t know.”