Chapter 71: A Disturbing Discovery (III)
“So that’s how I die, huh?” Riven muttered as he and Crow Zero trudged across the wasteland toward the cave’s location.
“Silence,” Vorrick said, walking just slightly behind him. “If I wanted you dead, you wouldn’t still be breathing.”
“Then why am I?” Riven stopped, turning to face the Prime.
Vorrick halted as well, but only gestured forward. “Don’t stop. Keep moving.”
It didn’t sound like a suggestion.
Riven obeyed, his steps heavy. Only once he was walking again did Vorrick finally answer. “I’m still deciding what to do with you. But…I’d rather not kill you.”
“Really?” Riven asked, sounding doubtful.
“Really.”
Ahead, the terrain dipped sharply. Beyond the drop lay the cave the Eye Sentry had found. Activating Aero, both Crows jumped forward and allowed the air around them to carry them down. Once on the ground again, they continued on foot toward the dark opening.
“What do you plan to do with what you’ve learned?” Vorrick asked after a long silence.
“I don’t know yet,” Riven admitted. “But the public needs to know that someone had to die so the heating systems in their homes would work.”
“You think they’d care?”
“I’m sure of it.”
Vorrick chuckled low. “Na?ve. Most Skyhaveners spend their entire lives without so much as seeing a citizen from Orlinth or the Foundry. They’re invisible to them. You think they’d care that every crystal in their possession was once a human? They already know the lower platforms bleed to death to sustain their way of living, yet they live their lives without a thought.”
“That’s different,” Riven argued.
“Is it?” Vorrick asked, tone slightly mocking. “Even Valdemar understands that. Why do you think he hasn’t exposed the truth himself? Because he knows it wouldn’t matter. He knows nothing would change.”
“Maybe you two are just alike in the way you believe the people have already abandoned their morality,” Riven shot back.
“You’re a hypocrite,” Vorrick said sharply. “Roughly one hundred thousand Foundry residents die every year—Parasite, mines, starvation—so Skyhaven could float safe and unbothered. You never cared back then, did you? No. But now, suddenly, when you learn that some faceless people had become crystals, you grow a conscience? Don’t preach morality to me. Something else is driving you.”
Riven slowed, struggling to form a reply to the accusation. Instead, he decided to piss Vorrick off.
"Maybe I'll just join Valdemar, then," he said mock-thoughtfully. "At least he tries to change the life of the people instead of keeping the sick status quo."
"That's treason talk, Wesley," Vorrick warned. "You better stop now."
Riven wanted to respond, but before he could, Vorrick pointed forward. The cave loomed ahead—a dark opening in the cliffside.
“We’re here,” he said coldly. “Get ready.”
Instinctively, Riven activated Lumen and conjured a pale orb of light from his palm. It floated above them, slightly ahead, lighting the way.
Riven stepped inside first.
The air shifted immediately. Its faint yellowish tint gave away the presence of the Parasite, hanging like a haze. The cavern was cramped, its walls jagged, but a narrow tunnel stretched ahead—the same one after which the Eye Sentry was attacked.
The passage sloped steeply downward. A rope, thick and taut, was anchored around a rock at the edge.
Riven tugged the rope. It held fast, carefully placed.
“Someone’s living here,” he muttered quietly to avoid an echo.
“How deep?” Vorrick asked—though it sounded more like an order to find out than a question.
Riven flicked the Lumen orb forward. The slope trailed for nearly a hundred meters before the end of the rope came into view and the ground leveled out again.
“Go first. I’ll cover,” Vorrick whispered a command.
Riven hesitated, but he knew he had no choice.
Using Aero again, he glided down the slopping tunnel. His boots touched stone in a broader cavern where another tunnel yawned ahead, plunging even deeper. Once again, a rope was tied to a rock at its edge. The yellow haze was thicker here.
Vorrick landed beside him a second later.
“This is where we lost the Eye Sentry, isn’t it?” Vorrick asked rhetorically. “Look for clues—but stay warry.”
Riven nodded hesitantly—probably weighing whether to obey, considering the likelihood Vorrick planned to execute him anyway—and scanned the cavern.
He found nothing.
“If they brought it down in this cavern, they probably took it with them,” he muttered, pointing at the tunnel ahead.
“Damn scavengers,” Vorrick growled, then turned to Riven. “Go on, then. I’ll cover the rear.”
Riven stepped toward the tunnel but stopped short. He turned, his voice annoyed but steady. “Listen—we both know you’re going to kill me and say we were attacked or something. Just get it over with.”
Vorrick shook his head. “Like I said, I haven’t decided. As a matter of fact, I’m now considering sending you to Libra as a triple agent.”
“And why would I agree to that?”
“Because you’re not stupid.”
“I’m not sure you—”
The sentence died as a deafening BANG tore through the cavern. A projectile exploded through Riven’s shoulder, and a painful groan escaped his throat.
Despite wearing the impenetrable Aetherguard Mark III, the shot had pierced his armor from the back and punched clean out the front.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
An Aetheris Bullet.
He staggered, lost balance, and fell backward, down the slope.
“Wesley!” Vorrick roared, diving after him. He caught Riven mid-fall, his armblade snapping out and plunging into the stone to slow their descent. Sparks screeched against the rock until they came to a stop.
Another gunshot cracked, echoing violently around them. Vorrick, still holding Riven’s body, reacted even before he heard it. He detached the blade from the arm, letting them drop the final stretch. The bullet smacked into the slope above, missing by inches.
They hit level ground hard. But Vorrick was already moving—Kinetra’s orange aura flaring around him. He already tracked down the shooter—a man with a rifle. Running.
Vorrick launched forward. A moment later, his gauntleted hand closed on the man’s skull and smashed it against the jagged wall. Blood splattered everywhere.
Then, another BANG.
But Vorrick’s senses and Kinetra-empowered body were already on high alert.
He immediately twisted aside. The shot whistled past. He snapped up his armgun, and with a single burst blew the second gunman apart at the far end of the cavern.
But a third one had already lined up a shot.
The Prime moved in time, but the Aetheris Bullet connected, knocking off the weapon off his armgun.
Vorrick turned toward him, conjuring frost. A sharp shard of ice shot from his hand and took the shooter’s head clean off.
The danger was cleared.
Vorrick exhaled sharply, then sprinted to Riven’s side.
“How the fuck did it go through the suit?!” Riven groaned, clutching his shoulder. “It fucking burns! More than a regular bullet wound!”
“It might be the Parasite—but don’t worry,” Vorrick said, trying to calm him. He picked up a fallen bullet—the one Riven had been clutching this entire time before dropping it in the fall.
He split the bullet open, spilling the powder and keeping only the shell. Then he hauled Riven upright by the chestplate.
“What are you doing?” Riven muttered, still in pain.
Vorrick found the ragged hole the Aetheris Bullet had punched in the back of Riven’s suit. He pressed the empty shell case over it and channeled a controlled burst of Ignis fire to fuse it in place, then cooled it instantly with Cryora’s ice. The metal sealed neatly against the suit. He eased Riven back down.
“That’s it. No one will even notice your suit was breached,” Vorrick said, seemingly reassuring himself as his head snapped from side to side, frantically searching for something to close the front hole with.
Riven breathed heavily. “Why are you doing this? You’re supposed to kill me.”
“I told you—I’m not killing you,” Vorrick replied, his visor aimed at his detached armgun across the cavern.
“Stop!” Riven grabbed his wrist, forcing him down, refusing to be saved by his hand. “I’m already contaminated.”
“We’ll let the doctors decide that,” Vorrick countered against all reason, trying to rise again. But Riven’s grip tightened. He pulled Vorrick back.
Then, Riven did the unthinkable.
He reached to his helmet, pressed the chin release, and flipped his visor open.
He sucked in a lungful of the yellow haze and exhaled with a twisted grin. “There! Contaminated for sure. Now you have to kill me. Whatever you had planned for me—it’s over. You can’t use me. You have no power over a dead man. You can only finish me!”
“Idiot!” Vorrick snarled, hands flying for his visor, trying to slam it shut.
But Riven resisted. Their struggle wrenched the helmet's mechanism. It jammed, leaving a narrow gap across his face.
Vorrick groaned in frustration and dropped beside him. “You stupid bastard, Wesley. I told you—I wasn’t going to kill you!”
“Liar!” Riven barked. “You brought me down here with you to bury me. Don’t deny it!”
“I told you—I was still deciding!”
“Deciding what? What cover up story you’d tell Gold and the rest?!”
Vorrick did not respond. His visor was locked on the corpses of the ambushers.
“…They’re not wearing masks,” he muttered.
“What?” Riven frowned, startled. He twisted his head to look. He saw it too: the dead gunmen were barefaced. They had no protective gear on them.
“How the fuck are they breathing the Parasite?” Riven whispered, confusion growing in his voice.
Suddenly, against all reason, Casten Vorrick reached for his helmet, unsealed it, and pulled it free.
“What are you…?” Riven asked, in disbelief.
Vorrick ignored him. He drew in one sharp breath of the thick air. Then another. Then another.
His eyes widened. “It’s just like Dolos said…”
“Who? But the Parasite—“
Vorrick silenced him with a raised hand. He turned toward yet another steep tunnel with a trailing rope ahead.
“You hear that?” he asked Riven, cocking his head, listening. “It’s faint, but there are voices down there. They’re living underground.”
Despite his pain, Riven staggered upright. He clawed at his helmet, but it wouldn’t budge off. It turned out the entire helmet was jammed—not just the visor.
Slowly, he joined Vorrick at the tunnel’s edge. Vorrick steadied him with a hand, offering balance.
“Listen,” he said.
And Riven did.
The sounds were unmistakable. Not machines, industry, or damn magitek engines.
It was life.
Vorrick wrapped one arm around him, activated Aero, and together they descended into the darkness. The tunnel stretched on far longer than the previous two, before finally leveling out.
They emerged on a cliff overlooking a vast crevasse. And on the other side of it lay…an entire city. Inside a massive cavern where the sky was a high ceiling of jagged rocks was a place that shouldn’t have existed.
The city was small. Far less impressive than Skyhaven or even Orlinth, but it was alive: thousands of glowing lights everywhere, and the sounds of a community alive and thriving bouncing off the walls.
“H-How many people…?” Riven muttered in shock. He shook his head. “No. Forget that. Who are they even? I thought Solvane was the only place where life still existed.”
Vorrick released his grip on him, stepping forward with narrowed eyes before crouching just next to the edge. “Ten thousand, maybe less. Probably the ones we exiled over the years. Bunch of criminals and traitors.”
Riven’s head snapped toward him. “Forget that! Don’t you see what this means? It’s proof we don’t need the damn platforms anymore, the blood-soaked magitek, the secrets!”
“You don’t know they don’t use magitek,” Vorrick countered, standing tall again. “They might be using it as well.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Noticed the lack of steam and smoke?” Vorrick asked, gesturing at the city, his expression judgmental. “How else would they power all that light without steam if not by magitek?”
“We could just ask them instead of guessing,” Riven shot back. “Don’t you see the bigger picture, though?” He pointed a finger at Vorrick. “You and I are proof that the Parasite is no more! Or at least that it doesn’t kill anymore!”
Vorrick’s tone remained flat. “It means nothing. The people in the Foundry still die from it—that's an undisputed fact. For all we know the Parasite might be weaker here because they created something for it to be so—something that requires the blood-soaked magitek. Symptoms may still come. Death may still follow. You’re reaching.”
“You know I’m right!”
“I don’t know anything.”
“Then why did you take your helm off?” Riven asked, then shook his head. “You know what? Fuck it. Let’s wait a day!” he suggested, almost pleading. “If we’re still alive, that’s all the proof we need!”
Vorrick raised a brow. “Weren’t you asking me to kill you moments ago?”
Riven froze, then his eyes widened. “Yeah, but that was before this!” He pointed at the glowing underground city, voice shaking with excitement. “I thought I was doomed to accept our reality, but this changes everything! We need to let this be known!"
"You're being too emotional again!" Vorrick barked. "Things like this need to be tested for a long while before such important decisions are made. We'll discuss this with the Primarch—"
"Fuck the Primarch!" Riven snapped, cutting him off. "He's the biggest liar of you all! If you'd tell him about our discovery, he'd just craft an elaborate lie that will ensure things stay exactly the same!" His voice suddenly turned softer. "I was wrong about you. I thought that as Vice-Primarch you're as despicable as he is, but you're different. I can tell. Let's think of a different way to progress with this. Please!"
Vorrick remained silent for a moment. Then, he shook his head, repeating his earlier answer. "Things like this need to be tested for a long while before such important—"
"Oh, screw this!" Riven barked. "Then I'll just join Libra!"
Vorrick's gaze sharpened. "Careful, Wesley. You're threading on thin ice here."
"I don't care!" Riven shook his head aggressively. "If to make a change—a real change—I need to support the other bastard, so be it!"
Casten Vorrick sighed deeply, nodding.
"Okay," he said softly. "I can see your resolve clearly now. Tell me what you think we should do and I promise I'll listen."
"Yes." Riven nodded. "I knew you were reasonable." He turned toward the city, speaking with excitement again. "We need to—”
The shot cut him off.
The bullet hit him precisely in the crack of his broken visor. The impact jolted his entire body off the cliff and into the dark crevasse below.
Casten Vorrick lowered his arm, the faint orange glow of Kinetra fading from his fingers. He had flicked the bullet he had hidden earlier—the one whose case he used to patch Riven’s armor—turning it into a powerful projectile.
He exhaled slowly, his gaze locked on the city.
“I’m sorry, Wesley. I really meant it when I said I didn’t want to kill you,” he murmured to himself. “It’s just…I found Novus eighteen months too early.”
[Vestige of Time #3 – END]
I probably should've asked this after the previous chapter but better late than never: which side are you on in this dilemma?
