Arc X.1 | Chapter 330: Interlude | Project Piketown Infiltration 4

The towering gates of the Meoshi zyi Shurong swung open for Hurinren, dozens of soldiers pulling and pushing the ancient gears that controlled the useless thing. The gates were so heavy, the internal controls so old, that they scarcely went a month before some part was breaking yet again. Millennia old as they were, only specialists could fix both the gate and the other numerous relics of past dynasties that littered Dion.

Hurinren appreciated tradition—one didn’t end up the Jiaonai Lo Shintai’s prime student and heir and find themself hating on tradition—but some of their infrastructure desperately needed updating. Keep the aesthetics but update the innards, at least. Even the abilities of the Jiaonai Lo Shintai had been updated over the last few decades, a mixture of his own style melting with his lokiar’s. Progress was inevitable, unless you were an ancient gate and—

A chorus of scrambling feet and hollers to stop collided with the sound of something once again breaking inside the gate’s mechanisms. Hurinren had lived within the Meoshi zyi Shurong the majority of his life, rarely ever living outside its walls: the first few years of his life before his teacher had found and taken custody of him; when the Inner Court moved to the Kuwya zyi Shurong for its yearly attempt to avoid the sweltering summer heat of the capital; and while serving with Division 30 during the war. Having heard the gate break often enough during those many decades, he was nearly positive one of the inner ropes had snapped.

Again, if they just updated the system to use chains…

The stupidest thing was that he didn’t even

need

to go through the bloody gate! Sparking in and out of the palace would have been much easier, especially considering he’d been going far enough east that he’d been sparking anyways. It was rare he did more than stuff his temporary Censor into a pocket—and he really only did that because Yujao would fuss if he weren’t able to put it on and spark out of danger if needed—but he’d worn the blood thing to spark. He was going out on

official business,

however;

business for the crown,

something about

official emissary

being added onto the already obnoxious list of titles that had been called as he exited the palace through the gate early that morning—titles which would be called out once more as he entered.

Assuming he could even enter, the gate stuck mostly closed.

Ridiculous.

A burst of energy exploded out of him, pushing the gate open just enough that he could slip through the gap. The various staff and soldiers lingering around, distracted by the disaster of the gate breaking yet again, seemed to assume the gate’s movement was due to some internal mechanism as the damage settled and didn’t even notice him slipping through.

Seriously, the gate wasn’t just a nuisance, it was a bloody security threat!

Hurinren didn’t run up the hundreds of steps to the tairongdo—he wasn’t allowed to run while returning to the palace unless it was an emergency, nor was he allowed to spark until he passed fully through the first ring of the palace—but his black clothing let him fall into the darkness of the night. It was late—far later than he’d meant to return, but the former ryohuang’taiung had kept him long.

The man was lonely. The man was dying. Of course, there were other people the ailing man would prefer were with him, but one was long dead, her life snuffed out under the weight of the ocean, over a decade earlier, and the other… Well, when the man’s death was finally imminent, Hurinren knew the former ryohuang’taiung would finally ask if Hurinren could bring his wayward lokiar to him. Until then, the least Hurinren could do was give the old man a little of his time, even if he would prefer to be curled up with Yujao in their bed, his husband’s fingers digging into his bare chest and leaving perpetual scratches with the sharp points of his nails.

Hurinren didn’t mind—he happily took far more pain than that from the only man he had ever loved.

It wasn’t until he was nearly to the entrance of the tairongdo that one of the staff who were supposed to be managing the gate finally noticed him, a chorus of overlapping, uneven greetings and official calls trailing after him far too late. A few sounded worried about what would await them when he reported their ineptitude at keeping the palace safe to Hua—let the Empress’ personal guard deal with the disaster of reporting the incident to the appropriate parties. Neither of them were good with people or the politics of the Inner Court, but at least Hua had training to deal with it— Well, technically, Hurinren did as well, but the short temper he let the world believe him to possess was more likely to cause further issue than actually result in the security issue being fixed—not that security anywhere had been particularly great since sparking was created.

While the Baalphorian government had supplied every government with numerous skill blockers, each focused primarily on stopping sparks, they were never enough; they didn’t cover enough space, and while Hurinren was supposed to know every person with a copy of the unstoppable spark Division 30 and many members of The Black Knot used, they all knew it was just a matter of time before someone devised another version of the spark.

Over fifteen years had passed since Emilia created sparking, Halen’s ghost lingering within her innovations alongside Bristol’s contributions and knowledge straight from Moriana’s unique core abilities, not to mention whatever she had seen when The Ridge Rind went down. As much as he knew she had protected the code and ideas behind sparking with brutality and the knowledge that her encryption of the publicly available version would slow its execution—likely costing people their lives when it activated just a little too slow—it was just a matter of time before someone else figured out the how of it.

His lokiar was brilliant, her and Halen both centuries ahead of virtually everyone save Bristol. Even Vrin Devano had admitted he could never hope to catch up to them even before Alliance Ridge was destroyed and their unit’s most dangerous innovations were barely thoughts scratching the fibres of their minds. Maybe Helix had caught up or exceeded them now. None of them were stupid enough to think that no one else would catch up, and then, there would inevitably be assassins slipping through the aether with barely more than a ripple—unstoppable.

The brief solace of the tairongdo's climate control broke back into the quickly growing heat of summer as he stepped into the taikra, the courtyard which separated the long, thin hallway of the tairongdo, from the next rongdo. Each rongdo makr way for a courtyard, another ring, another courtyard—some were filled with greenery and small buildings for events, others filled with more distinct districts. On and on the rings of the palace went, until finally anyone unfortunate enough to be on a mission to the throne room would find themself at the centre of the Meoshi zyi Shurong.

Hurinren wasn’t going to the throne room—it was far too late for Hua to be there, hidden behind the Empress Supreme’s throne as she pretended to listen to the Inner Court members fawning for her attention and squabbling over the most inane things. Besides, the moment he was two steps into the courtyard, he was sparking away, leaving the bowing frames of every person who saw him and their reverent mutters of

lomin’taiyung

behind in favour of not torturing himself.

Risk of assassins or not, sparking truly was a wonderful thing.

More utterings of

lomin’taiyung

greeted him as he sparked to the gate of the residential district where Hua lived—even he wasn’t rude enough to spark directly into either the building or the bodyguard’s room. The courtyard he did appear in was even more unpleasant than the first, the scent of food and men and the lives of those who were neither Inner Court members nor

not

Inner Court members mixing in with the heat. The heat vanished as he stepped into the residential district, one of dozens of square blocks in the seventh rongdo, most of which were inhabited by more influential guards and their families, but the smells—the weight—of the culture that lived within it remained.

It wasn’t exactly bad, but definitely not the sort of environment he himself preferred. Half the time he had a difficult enough time tolerating his husband’s chaos, and that was after over fifty years living together. In those first months, he had been nothing but a teenager, sneaking Yujao into his rooms when he and Emilia had first discovered the boy and his plans. Then, all that had been sorted out, and despite his years being driven half-mad by his lokiar’s chaos, Hurinren had missed the flighty ball of energy that was Yujao. Barely days had passed without his then-crush—who had his own room at that point—in his space, and Hurinren had missed him so much even his teacher had commented on it.

It hadn’t taken long for Yujao to find his way into Hurinren’s bed once again, this time not just because he needed a place to hide while knowing he was safe. Hurinren would forever be grateful to Emilia for making sure Yujao knew his feelings, even if at the time, having her expose him so thoroughly to the boy he liked had almost caused an irreparable tear in their relationship.

Now, decades on—including a decade of only briefly seeing Emilia once, when she was visiting Julian in Norvel several years previous—Hurinren could admit, he missed the girl.

Somehow, that felt like a terrible premonition, a shudder racketing through him that said she was about to return, bloody and disastrous—a wind of change and chaos that would blow the world apart yet again.

“What is that grimace for?”

Hua asked when he opened the door, ushering Hurinren inside.

Hua’s house smelled like nothing—all scent erased from it. Had he not been spending much time at home recently, or had he already known Hurinren was coming?

“How is the ryohuang’taitianung?”

“Still dying. Still somehow not already dead,”

Hurinren replied, nudging a pile of books onto the floor so he could sit. Before they could hit the ground, Hua’s energy was cushioning them, moving them elsewhere.

“Why do you have books from the library?”

Hua tensed, so slight that it was only the result of knowing the man since they were teenagers that allowed Hurinren to see it.

“Hua?”

The man—who was, rather unfortunately, the closest thing Hurinren had to a friend in Dion other than his husband, and the two of them weren’t even that close—was quiet, instead busying himself with gathering snacks for the pair of them. Sweets for himself, spicy snacks for Hurinren. It didn’t matter that they were barely friends, Hua always kept his kitchen stocked for their visits.

“You’ll think I’m stupid,”

the bodyguard finally said, plopping into the seat across from Hurinren. Hua didn’t look at him, his gaze instead trained through the window, and into the black night.

So not auspicious.

“Tell me.”

“I just… look, I know it’s crazy, and I know I’ve never been one of those people inclined to believe in the will of the aether or that it's capable of giving us urges to do things.”

No, Hurinren didn’t suppose Hua had ever been like that. Maybe once, before they’d met as teenagers. Emilia had once said something about how they’d followed one of her urges—the ones she would never say if she thought came from the aether or some instinct inside her—and the pair of them had ended up swimming inside a cave system that they definitely weren’t supposed to be in. It was outside the palace grounds, and personally, Hurinren imagined they must have had some help from the aether in getting past all the guards on their way there—multiple times, no less.

Still, the pair had been in a lot of trouble, resulting in the assignment of more guards onto them and a stripping of their freedom. Perhaps Hua had believed Emilia was connected to the aether at the time—and thanks to information from the late syna Gru, Hurinren was now aware she had always been far more connected to it than was common—and begun to associate

following the will of the aether

—knowingly or not—with only bad things? Clearly, if that were the case, Hua was unaware that the incident had also led her to attract the Blood Rain General’s attention, and despite his own immediate hatred of her when she’d been brought into

his

classes, Hurinren couldn’t deny that, overall, positive things had resulted from that attention.

It was odd, however, that Hua didn’t believe in signs from the aether. Having at least a passing belief was common in Dion, but most people leaned towards an outward belief that the aether could be a guiding force in their lives. So, for him to be starting his strange story about why he had descended into the archives of the Royal Library due to

a feeling

that he

needed to

earlier that morning… Yeah, that was weird.

Hurinren tugged the books back towards himself as Hua related how he had been wandering the palace while the Empress slept in and suddenly found himself in front of the library, something tugging him inside, and then deeper… deeper… until, finally, he’d found himself tugging a collection of books off the shelves and then just sort of leaving with them.

He definitely wasn’t supposed to have just left with them.

“Where were the guards?”

Hurinren asked, glaring away from the flowing script of ancient Dionese, which was somehow even less legible than modern Dionese tended to be.

“No idea. I kinda assumed that whatever weird urge made me go in was also urging them away?”

Hua shrugged, saying he sent back a patrol a few minutes later, and the guards who were supposed to always be in front of the library were back.

“They said it was weird. When I went in, an Inner Court member—that bumbling idiot from the Wureshi family—spilled some sort of sticky drink over both of their shoes. They figured it would be fine to spark off and change quickly—didn’t even think that maybe one of them should remain behind to watch the door, as they’d only be gone for a minute to change their shoes.”

“And when you came out?”

“Turned out they were just around the corner, consoling a little girl who was lost. They set up a detection barrier, but the one they used doesn’t trigger for other guards.”

Hua shrugged, muttering that while he had managed to get in and out undetected, it seemed like a slip of fate.

Hurinren fingered through several of the books, all of which seemed to cover vastly different topics and none of which seemed particularly interesting.

“Were you going to tell me about this?”

he asked, already suspecting he knew the answer.

Hua might not believe, but Hurinren did, and the way he had slipped through the staff at the gate so easily… Either there was a serious issue with security all through the palace—which would be both a headache and exceptionally strange given they’d upped their training during the war and had yet to reduce it back to prewar levels—or something else had let him avoid their attention.

Something

which had led him here, to tell Hua about the security issues.

Something

that wanted him to find these books sitting in his spot.

“Ah… no,”

Hua said, dark eyes looking away once more.

“I wasn’t going to tell you unless I actually found something in the books… or if I needed help sneaking them back into the archives.”

Hurinren pushed half the books towards Hua.

“Shall we look, then?”

Apparently he wouldn’t be making it home to snuggle with his husband tonight. Annoyingly, he’d forgotten his xphern at home, and while Yujao often wore his Censor, it seemed like overkill to put his on and risk his husband’s sleep, just so he could let him know where he was.

Later, when it was closer to Yujao’s usual, late-morning waking time, Hurinren would send a message. For the moment: deciphering ancient Dionese. Awesome. Just how he wanted to spend his night.