Chương 23: Chapter 22: Current Arsenal

The search for the Other had been a complete failure. They'd tried every method, checked every corner, every forgotten passage Elma hadn't even known existed in this manor until she went looking for somewhere a child could hide in it. Nothing. She hadn't accounted for the possibility that he could simply be this good at evasion—or worse, that he'd felt them searching and simply stopped moving entirely, waiting them out in whatever crawlspace or attic he'd claimed as his own.

Defeated, Elma and Jorm retreated to the nursery. Hephryx would be here in two days, if she wasn't counting today. She intended to be the more dangerous one in that room. He hadn't been a Resonant, not in the life she remembered—which meant if it came to it, she could simply reach into his chest and turn the water in his heart into a clot, neat and silent and untraceable. She smiled faintly at the thought. The Other would have laughed at that one. The quiet sanctity of the nursery had been thoroughly breached.

Jorm was sprawled ungracefully across Elma's mattress, her legs kicking idly in the air as she stared down at a massive, leather-bound tome. The maid let out a loud, exaggerated groan of frustration, letting the heavy cover flop shut against the blankets. Elma observed her from the desk. It was a fascinating psychological shift. The terrified, subservient girl Elma had first encountered was completely gone.

"I don't know where to start," Jorm complained.

"I read this paragraph, then that one, and suddenly it's talking about something completely different. Whoever wrote this book must have been blind. Or drunk. Actually, can books get drunk? Because this one certainly is." She let the book fall shut against the mattress with a sound like a small defeated sigh.

"Are you done writing yet?"

"No," Elma stated, not looking up from her parchment. Elma's quill scratched methodically across the paper. She was calculating her Lattice Reserve (LR) economy. Watching Damian completely deplete his reserves on the terrace had provided a vital, albeit pathetic, piece of data. The moment his LR hit zero, his internal reinforcement had instantly collapsed, reducing a trained combatant into a fragile, baseline human. It was a fatal vulnerability.

To ensure she never reached that critical threshold, Elma needed to establish a strict baseline for her own output. She began by reviewing the raw expenditure from the spar: Weaving 1 kg of ambient mass required a standard output of 10 LR. That meant the 500 tons of water she manifested in the fight cost five million LR. Elma stared at the number on the parchment. Five million LR was an enormous expenditure for a standard Resonant, but for her, it was entirely manageable.

Her current Lattice Reserve was a staggering 100, 000, 000 LR. Dropping the equivalent of an avalanche on Damian had only consumed five percent of her total LR. Still, operational efficiency was the difference between survival and death in a prolonged engagement. She continued to write, meticulously categorizing the structural, kinetic, and thermodynamic costs of her current arsenal.

Current arsenal: Water Drill: 500 LR Barometric Coffin: scale with RU Slag Round: 1, 000 LR Pyroclast: 1, 000 LR/s Water Auxiliaries: 10 LR per kg to weave + 1 LR per kg per second to maintain Stillstorm: 5, 000, 000 LR for summoning, 100, 000 LR/s to maintain Elma leaned back in her chair, tapping the feather of her quill against her chin. She factored in her recovery rate: 83, 333 LR per second.

At that regeneration speed, every single weave in her current arsenal—with the exception of the Stillstorm—was essentially free. Her lattice replenished the energy faster than she could expend it. However, the calculation also served as a stark, humbling reminder. If her abilities cost so little relative to her maximum capacity, it meant her current offensive output was not actually that powerful on a grander scale. She was merely scratching the surface of her potential. She was only just starting.

"Are you done yet?" Jorm pressed, leaning her head over the edge of the mattress to peer upside down at Elma. Elma let out a quiet sigh. She folded the parchment, closed her leather-bound notebook, and carefully hid it at the very bottom of her wooden toy box. Elma pulled the heavy Geo-weaving tome from Jorm's hands and flipped it open. Her eyes swept across the pages. The book was filled with elaborate diagrams attempting to depict the patterns threns adopted to form various earth-based elements.

Spirals overlapped grids. Geometric shapes folded into one another. Entire pages were devoted to intricate illustrations accompanied by short rhymes meant to aid memorization. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Elma squinted.

"What is this?" Jorm immediately sat upright.

"See? I told you it was confusing." Elma flipped to another page. The pattern supposedly representing copper looked almost identical to the one for silver. The accompanying explanation was little more than a paragraph of vague metaphors. Jorm rolled over, practically butting her head against Elma's shoulder.

"So, what do we do?" Elma stared at the book for another moment before snapping it shut. Whoever wrote this had tried their best to translate living patterns into ink and paper, but the result felt imprecise. She would just teach her the same way she was taught.

"It's going to take a long time to learn these," Elma said.

"You must first find an object made from the element you want to learn, then focus your field on it until you can feel its patterns. Keep at it until they become ingrained in your memory. That's how I did it."

"I understand," Jorm said, stroking her chin. For some reason Elma didn't believe her.

"What do you want to start with?" Jorm went completely silent. A sudden seriousness entered her eyes as she stared at the closed cover of the book.

"I have one," Jorm said quietly.

"What is it?" Jorm didn't answer her directly. She offered a tight, guarded smile.

"You'll see." The maid suddenly hopped off the bed, smoothing out her apron as she slipped back into her hurried persona.

"I have to get back to work. I'll be back tonight!"

"Tonight?" Elma asked, her brow furrowing in confusion. But Jorm was already gone, bolting out of the nursery doors before Elma could get an answer. Elma sat back on her bed, watching the faint, golden light of the western sun peek over the high stone walls of the Altheris estate. The shadows in the nursery were just beginning to stretch across the floor.

"My lady," a voice called softly from the doorway. Elma turned. A maid stood at the threshold, carrying a silver tray laden with a late lunch. Her head was bowed low, her shoulders hunched as if she desperately did not want to be perceived. But Elma's memory was absolute.

"Rita," Elma said plainly.

"You are still alive." Rita flinched slightly at the blunt statement. She offered a strained, nervous laugh and hurried forward to set the heavy tray down on the desk.

"I almost wasn't, my lady. I... I am just very happy that you are fine." Elma immediately dragged the tray to her side. The scent of roasted meat and warm bread triggered a sharp, aggressive response from her stomach. Her metabolism was working in severe overdrive lately, burning through calories at an alarming rate. As Elma reached for her fork, Rita quickly turned on her heel to leave.

"Did Leta die?" Elma asked.

"I haven't seen her since the attack." Rita froze. Her shoulders locked rigidly in place. She stood with her back to Elma for a long moment.

"She's... um..." Rita stammered, her voice suddenly thin and trembling. A heavy silence stretched across the nursery. Rita reached out, her hand gripping the edge of the wooden doorframe.

"Yes," Rita finally whispered, her voice cracking. Without waiting to be dismissed, she immediately hurried out into the hallway, her footsteps echoing in a frantic retreat. Strange woman, Elma noted, before turning her attention back to her plate and quietly eating her food.

Night fell over the Altheris estate, casting long, heavy shadows across the nursery. Jorm still had not returned. Elma slid off her bed and stepped out of the nursery. The corridors were quiet, lit only by the flickering orange glow of wall sconces. As she walked, a dull, persistent static hummed at the back of her mind. Something was bothering her, a lingering variable her subconscious had flagged but her conscious mind could not identify. Internal Reinforcement? She needed to learn it immediately.

She didn't know when Sable would return to resume her training. She needed to learn it before her next battle. But no. That wasn't the source of the static. The Shepherd. She still needed data on the tether bound to her body, needed to understand exactly what class of threat she was actually dealing with, and calculate a definitive way to sever the connection. Folklore wasn't going to do that for her. No. That isn't it either. She kept walking, her small bare feet making no sound on the rugs. Could it be Hephryx?

He would be here in less than a day now. She'd already mapped out exactly what she'd do with her hands around his throat if it came to that. Not him. Her fingers found a loose strand of hair near her temple, twisting it absently between two fingers—and stalled there. It hadn't been brushed today. Someone always brushed it before bed, a hundred slow strokes counted out under their breath, and tonight no one had. Could it be… Leta? The moment the name surfaced, the static inside her head grew exponentially wilder.

A sudden pressure seized her chest, and her breathing became incredibly heavy. It didn't make logical sense. Leta wasn't important. Elma had never even paid her any real attention when she was alive. She was a background variable, a mere servant. Why was she the one triggering this physiological revolt? She instantly regretted realizing it. The weight of the connection was a liability.

"What do you want?" Elma whispered, her jaw clenched as she spoke directly to her own uncooperative body. She leaned flat against the wall, bracing her small frame as she forced her mind to disconnect from the panic. She aggressively busied her thoughts, running simulation after simulation of her unproven Internal Reinforcement theories, tracing imaginary lattice pathways and calculating energy distribution nodes.

She held onto the calculations like an anchor, forcing her thoughts back to numbers and ratios whenever they drifted toward Leta. The numbers held, mostly. She pushed off the wall, her legs steadier than her thoughts, the lattice pathways still scrolling behind her eyes like a ledger she hadn't finished balancing. The corridor stayed quiet. No further static. Whatever had pulled at her had nothing left to report. There was no value in standing here.

She walked back toward the nursery, her bare feet silent on the runners. Twelve sconces between the corridor and her door. She had counted them every night since the attack. It gave her hands something to do besides notice they were shaking. By the time she reached her room, the calculation had stopped working the way she wanted it to. It hadn't erased anything. It had only given the static somewhere to wait.

She climbed onto the mattress, drawing her knees to her chest as pale moonlight cut its familiar rectangles across the floor. Leta wasn't a variable. She wasn't anything Elma had a system for yet. The thought was still sitting there, unresolved, when the door suddenly swung open. Jorm slipped inside, pushing the heavy wood shut with a soft, urgent click. The maid was breathing heavily, her chest heaving as if she had just sprinted completely unseen across the entire estate.

"Elma, I—" She stopped, her eyes narrowing.

"Were you crying?" Elma immediately sat upright.

"No." Jorm stepped closer, squinting suspiciously.

"You were."

"I was not."

"Your eyes are red."

"Dust. From the books." Jorm stared at her for a long moment, before letting out a long sigh.

"Well, then I arrived at exactly the right time." Elma blinked. Jorm's expression softened slightly.

"Whatever is making you stare at walls and blame books is not healthy." Only then did she lift the dark bundle she had been carrying under her arm.

"And I know just what you need." Elma's eyes immediately dropped to it.

"What is that?" Jorm stepped into the moonlight and carefully unfolded the cloth. A small cloak spilled open between her hands.

"A gift," Jorm said proudly.

"Tresspenine-spun. All Resonants wear this type of cloth. It's the only material in the world that everyone can resonate with." Elma tilted her head. She had never heard of it. Jorm grinned.

"And before you say no, we're going outside." Elma frowned.

"Outside?"

"Yes. Outside." Jorm pointed toward the window.

"Fresh air. Clear your head. Less dangerous dust."

"I do not require—""You do." Jorm tossed the cloak directly into Elma's lap.

"Come on. You can explain all about the dust while we're sneaking out."

"What about your lesson, what did you want to learn?"

"It's outside."