Anaissa exited Ellie’s room and then stretched her back a bit as the sun came out.
"How is she?" I asked, really worried.
"She’s asleep. I’ve made her forget everything about Vazet," she replied casually, as if it was the most common procedure in the world. "I knew I was putting a huge burden on her, but she was the only person able to deliver the message without lashing out at you."
“Turning us into Thaebians like you,” she said before escaping the dining room and clashing with Anaissa, who then proceeded to put her to sleep on the spot.
What she meant with those words was ominous: Vazet had apparently used the tide of patients he himself created to experiment on human physiology, turning Earth humans into something akin to Thaebian humanoids.
I already knew a lot about anatomy and physiology, thanks to my overzealous study of medicine. I had even used my enlightened senses to draw some parallels between my patients' anatomy and my own. And yes, the best comparison was, still, "Thaebians are denser". But that explanation had a lot of serious implications. You can’t turn a normal human into a twice as heavy version of themselves so easily. From new protein chains to changing the genome, big changes in the organs and weaving of muscle matter; constitution of bones and the raw materials themselves… whatever process Vazet was using for this purpose, it had to be dangerous, invasive, and extremely painful. And the worst of it: There was likely no guarantee that the process would work, or that the patient would survive, for that matter.
"I really wish I could've told you about it myself, but…" Anaissa mumbled, still ashamed of the burden she had placed on my mother figure.
"Don’t worry about it," I cut her off. I didn’t like her when she was this apologetic. "Yesterday was just a crazy day that I hope we never have to repeat."
"You want to think that, but I can't promise you anything." We walked downstairs, to the, in theory, vacant basement. "With all of this, we still only managed to save the people of this orphanage, and if things don’t go well, their future will be incomparably bleaker than before.
"How did the orphanage staff react to everything?" I opened the hatch concealed within the tiled floor of the basement.
"Well enough, I think. I’ve given them incentives, I moved some of their families to new facilities and… let’s hope they don’t notice that I'm the one who created those buildings from thin air," she sighed while entering her actual home. "As soon as they find out I can give them nearly anything with a single thought, they’ll start to abuse my generosity.”
"How many people do we have now?" I followed her, closed the hatch, and then locked it. With everything so hectic right now, the best option was to keep the inverse spire home a secret.
"Eighty kids, ten staff, the headmistress, ten families that sum a total of thirty five people and six consorts; then there's you, me and Hisa.
"Did someone call for me?" Hisa replied from the kitchen while preparing a small banquet for the three of us.
"Not this time," I replied with half a smile, "But keep up the good work." We kept walking down the spire. "Do you think it's a good idea to build a city around the Home of the Stork?"
"I won’t coerce anyone to stay here, but if I want them to stay here, they'll need some place to live. I’ve already done too much, basically kidnapping them without explanation." For an instant, I wished to return to our bed when we passed near the bedroom. "But the alternative isn’t something I would allow. Either way, if they really want to go, I’ll let them. End of story." But I noticed it pained her to say those words. "It’s more important to remain hidden. If Vazet can really affect Snow, then I must go full Blizzard Lady to avoid his sight."
"What’s a…?" I cut off my question. Snow, Storm, Blizzard… it wasn’t that hard to understand. "So, you were going easy until now, is that right?"
"After watching the Aleph for months, I guessed that no one on this planet knew anything about Snow." We stopped in a new room of her subterranean home. "I guessed wrong."
It was a fairly small room, with a strange seat in the middle. I didn’t need to read too much about it to understand what its function was: a kind of mini Aleph whose range was limited to the nearest regions around the Home of the Stork.
No doubt, it was a good place to create new facilities around the main building, and if what Anaissa had told me about "molding space” was true, it could also be used to control the location of the entire place. Like a dungeon filled with chains, all the Snow of the Home of the Stork would funnel into a person sitting in that seat. With a very precise thought, Anaissa could literally teleport the building anywhere in the world just altering the abstract concept of "place”. The first time she'd mentioned it to me, I thought she was pulling my leg until I remembered my first creation, the abstract concept of "silence”.
"So." Once she sat down in that tilted seat that angled her facing the ceiling, she crossed her arms over her chest and closed her eyes. "Are you sure you didn’t notice any Snow coming from that Vazet guy?”
"…yes!" that question rubbed me the wrong way. I still found that confrontation humiliating.
"And he'd been learning things about you without having any previous contact with you, is that right?”
"Unless my brother told him about me, which I doubt, there was no way he knew anything concrete about me. And, still, he had said my tribe’s name, learned that Uruk is my brother, and he was somehow able to read my tribal name.”
"I see…" she took a deep breath and I noticed some immediate changes to the area surrounding the Home of the Stork". There are two things we can be sure about him right now: he can either feel the Snow like you do, or he can see it like I do. And he probably knows how to alter it to his advantage." Kids here, adults there, but no one noticed that the buildings had grown several meters in only a few seconds, enough to expand the living space a bit more. "I'll need to know more about those 'druids' you told me about time and time again. Are they that special?"
"If you ask me, I never understood what their role in our society was. They seemed to provide counsel in all kinds of situations. They also performed rituals for good luck, and served as court sages in the few trials we held. They all seem like a bunch of quacks to me since I've been on Earth.”
"And still, you don’t deny that they were right most of the time." I begrudgingly nodded. "When you said they held 'rites for good luck' I thought they might be more than they seem. At least some of them, that is.”
"Do you think they can mold Snow?”
"Maybe. On my own Earth, I found several societies who discovered the ways of the Snow by pure chance and kept it as a tradition. It's rare, but Snow users do exist there." She stood up and walked down to the bottom of the spire. "Some of them go independent and call themselves 'Blizzard Lords' so they can feel more important than their peers. As soon as they reach a critical mass of Blizzard Lords, they all start to fight each other and, welp, as you can imagine, there’s never a lot of them afterward," she laughed. “Can you guess how many of them were in the last war they waged? Thirty two! On an entire planet!”
"Really?" I was surprised by that news. Sure, Snow molding has a steep learning curve, but, even so, a nobody like me could start on it. “Why so few?”
"Do you want any reasons aside from death? Some of them couldn’t stand the pressure of this art, so they settled on a few basic creations that solved most of their life problems; others got enslaved, and then the smarter ones simply left." She sat down in the middle of the Aleph. “And that’s basically what I did.”
"Why did you leave?" I sat down right beside her, trying to feel the same she did.
"To tell you the truth, I didn’t actually abandon my world: I was expelled." She laughed again, this time with more glee than her words alone could convey. “A fellow Wolf mercenary offered me his help in ‘finding balance’ in my life, so I allowed him. Next thing I know, I fell through the sky and landed ass-first in that forest, right next to you," she said with a smirk, unable to contain her smile. “Best first day ever!" Then, she sobered a bit, turning serious again. “I think Vazet, at the very least, has the means to abandon this world. You said you didn’t feel anything from him, and that’s because he's turned himself into a world in himself." Before I could ask what she meant by that, she breathed deeply and, right away, I stopped sensing her entire flow of Snow. “It’s a neat trick," she said, but her words felt a bit hollow now, no matter if my ears were working fine as ever. “You can survive in environments low on or entirely void of Snow if you just keep reusing your own Snow. And, if you bring enough Snow with you, you could probably survive anywhere, indefinitely. Or, as you may have noticed, you can make yourself invisible to other Blizzard Lords”.
"So, how will I be able to…?”
"Sense him? Use your damn eyes, you doozy head!" She embraced me playfully and tried to tickle me. “It just means that you’ll need to treat him like any normal person to find him! No more cheating with him, but that’s not a problem for you because you know a thing or two about tracking people, am I right?”
Between laughs, I couldn’t deny her point. So obsessed with Snow lately, I kept forgetting the basics about how my life was before my initiation. Almost everything now was special thanks to my many new senses, but they were no reason to look down on my own eyes, nose, and ears.
"…and…" Anaissa fell suddenly silent "…we need to go," she jumped up and started running up the spiral.
I watched her go away but I didn’t move. I preferred trying to discover what made her so serious on my own. Five seconds later, I stood up and just puffed and blew. There was no immediate danger, just a merchant freighter coming our way, filled to the brim with police officers. I followed my lover’s steps and found Hisa watching from the "pilot seat” entrance with curiosity in her eyes as she held a large tray with what I supposed was our meal.
"Again, going all mystical, huh?" I never asked her to be our de facto maid, but, as she herself said, ‘It’s better having two nice customers than a hundred pigs’. She seemed pretty satisfied with the way things were right now. “So, what do we do now?”
"We’re moving away from here," I sighed, grabbing one of the plates of food off the nearby tray, then casually beginning to eat. I began to see everything changing, all while no one else noticed anything amiss. “Vazet already knows we’re here and, again, we’re escaping him.”
"And Anaissa'll do this as many times as needed," Hisa said with her usual cynicism. “If she didn't have people to protect, I bet she'd just go all in and attack Vazet, going for the kill. But since she has all of us, I guess she isn't willing to risk it." She carefully positioned the tray on the ground and started walking away. “Make sure she eats. Something tells me she’s the obsessive type. And, if I'm right, tell her we need to have a very serious conversation at dinner.”
"About your outrageous wages?”
I tried to sound as ironic and grounded as she usually was, but this time, her laughing… it felt like literal snow on my face.
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