Echos Chapter 3

Echos Chapter 3

Baroness Margaret Thresh was watching the ascension ceremony at Marquess Heartless’s estate. With Duchess Felicity at the actual ceremony, the next highest noble in the chain of command had taken over the duty of gathering the Empire's nobility. Similar to Light and Shadow’s Ascension ceremony, she was there more to mingle and get her name in the ears and mind of both the other barons and her superiors, the viscounts and counts. Marquess Heartless was only one of thirty of Duchess Felicity's direct reporting subordinates, which meant there were only a few hundred direct nobles and their immediate entourages instead of thousands.

A ducal event was a far more impressive thing than that of even the grandest marquess, but she preferred this smaller style of event.

While she was the lowest form of noble here, she was at least able to talk to some of the viscounts and counts without them clamoring to chat with the foreign marquesses who weren’t Marquess Heartless. Contrary to the man's family name, Burt Heartless was an ideal lord to serve under. He never imposed anything more than the Imperial minimum taxes or tried to use his authority to secure one-sided trade deals with his underlings. In fact, he was unerringly fair and expected his Counts to be the same. That was fantastic, but it had the side effect of causing the viscounts, and barons especially to clamor, for the Marquess's attention like schools of fish circling a corpse whenever all of his nobles gathered.

As the newest baroness and the one who had been replacing one of their former peers, Margaret had little voice at such events. At a gathering like this, with just the marquess's direct reports, things were far more manageable, thus she could work to repair her undeserved reputation.

Not that it was her fault. But she was the one who benefited from the Emperor’s heavy-handed actions. It didn’t matter that the Junipers hadn’t even been well liked by most of their peers. A god had come down and crushed one of the ants, and now the rest of them didn’t want to interact with the replacement ant.

Margaret smiled as Baroness Dulta walked over to where she stood. She expected the other baroness to walk by her like everyone else had this evening, but Baroness Dulta turned slightly to intercept her.

“Good to see you Thresh, I didn’t see you at Sural’s a decade ago.”

Margaret analyzed Dulta’s expression as she nodded. It didn’t sound like a slight to her not attending the party for Countess Sural’s second child's birth, but a barb didn’t need to be so obvious to be there.

“I was sadly occupied with a negotiation with TrueMind and their desire to establish a manufacturing plant on Lilly.”

Baroness Dulta eyebrows went into her hairline as she gestured with her glass in a small toast. “Well, congratulations then. That's a massive fish to pull in… I assume you did pull them in?”

Margaret smiled and returned the small toast. “Of course I did.” Taking a sip, she let her fish struggle on the hook for a minute before she dropped some of the details about her deal with the largest AI corporation in the Empire. “They are already breaking ground on a new manufacturing plant as we speak. By next year, they will be producing AI locally.”

Baroness Dulta sighed in envy. “Ah, now that would be nice. I mean it's still nice, AI prices will drop all across the duchy. But you are going to see at least five higher Tiers move in if they follow their usual customs of overseeing their factories with Tier 30s. Combining their tax revenue with the taxes TrueMind will be paying? I’m burning with envy.”

Margaret dropped her other shoe. “Oh, it's better than that. While nothing is settled yet, they even hinted at wanting to open up a research laboratory as well. That would take a while, but the contract allows for it, and I sure won't deny them. It will help set Lilly apart from the faceless masses of low Tier worlds and give us a favorable export. I just need to make sure and use this to bring in more industrialization that my people can use.”

And it was true. The TrueMind deal probably had more to do with Matthew Moore and his royal inlaws than anything else, but they were the largest of the few large corporations to actually set down roots in Lily after that revelation. Others had inquired, but when she hadn’t been willing to give them a sweetheart deal, and sell her planet and people to them for the cheap in the process, their desire had shriveled up.

TrueMind, on the other hand, had treated her equitably and given her a near boilerplate agreement, which benefited both sides.

While a lot of the process of making artificial AIs was handled by robots, the plants were expensive and burned mana at a fantastic rate. That would raise the price of mana across the board, and while that would certainly be hard on some of their local crafters, the poorest and most desperate would see their personal mana become far more valuable. It wouldn’t even be too bad for the local crafters driven out of business by the increased costs, as TrueMind preferred to hire local personnel for the few areas which did require manual intervention, but weren’t directly involved in the manufacturing itself. Baroness Dulta had been correct when she mentioned the Tier 30s. There would be five moving into Lilly permanently, and Margaret wanted to make sure they were comfortable on Lilly so they wouldn’t treat it like exile.

To that end, she intended to schmooze the Counts and Marquess Heartless to see if she could get a higher Tier chef on loan from one of them, as no one on Lilly could cook food that a Tier 30 might desire.

Beyond that, she needed to capitalize on the at-cost quota of AI she had been given access to as part of TrueMind’s contract. They would be a useful bargaining chip in securing trade deals, which could capture this momentum and turn it into useful business contracts beyond her system. AI was a great export, but there were a dozen other industries she wanted Lilly to expand into. Creating footholds locally across multiple industries would both reduce costs to her people and also give the planet other valuable exports, which would encourage more traders from even farther away to come to Lilly.

After Matt and Liz had come to her planet, a number of higher Tier companies had wanted to settle. But their terms had either been not to Lilly’s advantage or they simply negotiated for the most basic of factories that did nothing more than produce mundane unexportable goods. The first was a hindrance, and the second was useful only for improving her local citizens' lives. That was a good thing, but if she could get some reputable name brands to move in and start producing on Lilly, she could both help her people and earn Lilly a valuable export.

Baroness Dulta’s lip twitched as she shook her head. “That is remarkable. Do be sure to go by and let Countess Sural know that. She didn’t say anything, but despite you sending a gift, Baron Bruce was in her ear about how you no longer cared about the structure of nobility, with the assistance Queen Mara and King Leon had sent your way. Thanks to their daughter marrying one of your natives. Whether the Countess believes it or not is another matter, but Baron Bruce was a good friend of the Junipers and will take any opportunity to toss a fireball in your lap.”

Margaret nodded, her jaw flexing. She hadn’t known that, which spoke volumes to her position in the local noble circles and made her reevaluate Baroness Dulta. They weren’t friends. Before this, they had been passingly friendly at best, but nothing more. That the baroness hadn’t allowed her to remain in the dark was a large mark in her favor.

And it was apparent she needed to find a friend in these circles if she was to remain connected to the political maneuverings.

“Thank you, Taylor. I owe you one.”

Margaret could tell Baroness Dulta was pleased by the acknowledgment of debt, but she had the good grace to not preen.

“Well, I’ll happily take a trade deal with some AI at, say, five percent over the cost that TrueMind is giving you. Currently, the trade route is so long from the nearest TrueMind production world that what does reach my world is horrendously expensive.”

Margaret nodded. It wasn’t surprising to hear that request, and to her credit, Baroness Dulta hadn’t pushed for her to operate at a loss.

She could work with this woman, it seemed.

Not bothering to quibble, she agreed. “Deal. And while I’d love to chat, apparently there is  a fire that I need to ensure isn’t still smoldering.”

Baroness Dulta waved her away. “I detest Bruce and his line. That said, I wouldn’t mind working closer going forward. Find me if you want to chat about some other deals we can make. But your first priority is placating the Countess.”

Margaret had to stop herself from running, but that was only through an effort of sheer will.

Careful to not offend everyone, she snaked her spiritual sense out to find Countess Sural. She found her in a slightly less busy area of the ballroom, sipping a drink while looking at a sculpture Marquess Heartless had scattered around the floor.

It was a style Margaret detested, minimalist to the extreme. No larger than a grain of sand, the sculpture might as well have been invisible to a mortal without the exceptional sense that came with advancing in cultivation.

There was no reason to make anything that small except to prevent those weaker than the artist deemed worthy to see the art.

It was Tierism, plain and simple.

From what Margaret knew, Countess Sural wasn’t the type, but she had been staring at the sculpture for minutes now.

Grabbing a fresh drink off a passing server's tray, she nodded to the Countess's entourage, who made an opening in their encirclement to allow her to pass through.

Coming to a stop next to the Countess Sural, Margaret nodded somewhere between a nod and a bow.

Before she could say anything, Countess Sural spoke, “Took you long enough. I half expected you to come crawling over the moment I arrived. Imagine my surprise when you just nodded at me.”

Margaret opened her mouth, but Countess Sural held up a finger stopping her. “You didn’t know. That's obvious now, Baroness Thresh. However, ignorance is inexcusable. Allowing your political rival to maneuver around you while you sit cluelessly will find you, at best, embarrassed to a superior. And at worst, removed for cause. If you are woefully unprepared for your position you need to correct that failing. Now, why are you here?”

Margaret was going to speak, but hesitated.

Countess Sural wasn’t wrong. Margaret was a pretty damn good administrator, but she knew she was a child in the political landscape.

The sea was deep, and there were a dozen layers of currents blowing every which way, and she was only able to see the surface. The thing was, Countess Sural wouldn’t, or rather shouldn’t, have said something if she was going to come down hard on a lowly baroness. She would have smiled, nodded, and then bad talked Margaret to her peers, ensuring Margaret found it difficult to work with them or anyone they worked for.

So why had she spoken out?

Before Margaret could formulate an answer, Countess Sural gestured to the statue. “What do you think of this work?”

Margaret scanned it to find a perfectly modeled estate with over a hundred unique people going about their lives. Some existed on the outside and were therefore visible with assistance, but others were inside closed rooms, where no one without exceptional spiritual sense could see them.

The sculpture itself was perfect. Plates had bits of food left on them, beds had creases, peoples outfits were frozen in movement. Sweat even rolled down a man’s face as he sparred with a golem.

It was perfect.

“It's stupid. It's pointless. It’s extravagant Tierism put on display under the clause of an artist flexing the ability to make things small. The only thing the miniature size of this sculpture did was make it so low Tiers couldn’t partake of its beauty.”

Countess Sural raised an eyebrow. “You find it beautiful? That surprises me. I had figured you would hate it.”

Margaret shrugged as she flexed her spiritual sense around the object. “It's beautiful. That's a fact. My distaste doesn't change that. It's a perfect moment for some family and their friends. The walls talk about how the children play while the adults try to keep them in line. How the parents love each other and leave little notes to each other. How the youngest two prank each other. How can I hate that?”

Countess Sural tapped her glass with a finger. “As a Tier 16, I hadn’t expected you to be able to delve so deeply into the intricacies of the sculpture, but I forget how advanced the spiritual sense of one who went into Minkalla can be. Let us return to my original question. Why are you here?”

Margaret felt whiplash at the sudden change of topic, but rolled with it. “I wanted to ensure there is no bad blood between us and to offer a token of my appreciation to ensure the same.”

Countess Sural sighed, and Margaret froze. “It's one thing to be direct about an apology. Falling on your sword and making such a statement obvious and direct can be useful. Doing the same with a gift makes it more like a bribe. I don’t want your gift of cheap AI from TrueMind. I’ll take their normal rates and subsidize the cost to my people myself. No, if you want to get in my good graces, you are going to come and spend a few years getting taught the things your parents would have taught you if you were a hereditary noble.”

Margaret churned through that idea in her mind before nodding slowly. “I accept. But why bother?”

Countess Sural let a faint smile cross her lips. “If you pay attention to my lessons, by the end of them, you will understand without me having to answer. Now, first things first. By the end of this party I want a plan of how you intend to infiltrate Henry Bruce's court and plant a few spies so he can’t blindside you again, and you don’t have to rely on the good graces of Taylor Dulta.”

Margaret assumed they were under some kind of privacy bubble if the countess was speaking so freely, and so spoke freely herself. “Shouldn’t I be working to infiltrate a number of courts and not just his?”

Countess Sural nodded. “Good. You passed the first lesson. No matter how good your plan was, if you didn’t hit everyone, I would have failed you. You need to know what everyone is doing, both your enemies and allies. Walk with me. We need to do some work on repairing your reputation. So far, you have made Baron Bruce's job easy. No longer.”

Margaret hadn’t known her reputation was so damaged as to need repairing, but followed along with the rest of Countess Sural’s entourage as the Countess took her from noble to noble starting with Marquess Heartless.

She was now a protégé. It was weird but useful, as the warm and welcoming faces attested to. Her new status allowed her to make a few new deals and connections thanks to the Countess' backing with people who would have ignored her before.

Three days later, the ceremony for Quill, Torch, and Scoop’s Ascension finally got started and the nobles gathered to watch.

Marquess Heartless had the position of honor next to the passive real-sized projection that made it seem like they were just part of the crowd of the ceremony, and Margaret had a much better position than she should have if she wasn’t part of Countess Sural's entourage.

The projection was lifelike and even came with spiritual perception feedback that allowed her to scan the Empire’s newest Ascenders.

The murmuring slowed and then died as the trio got closer to the center of the Emperor's throne room.

Then pandemonium broke out.

Margaret froze as she tried to process the faces of the trio.

She knew them.

She had eaten dinner with them. On more than one occasion, in fact.

Matt, Liz, and Aster, though the human form of the bond was new to her. They hadn’t been by Lilly since Matt and Liz’s wedding, but they had kept in contact through the occasional messages.

She wasn’t the only one to recognize them.

Everyone recognized them.

Elizabeth was the daughter of two royals for fuck's sake.

There was a moment of clamoring as everyone started to chatter, but Countess Sural froze. Margaret saw as her nails sharpened into claws before returning to their perfectly manicured human shape as she turned to Margaret. Her reaction was a moment faster than the rest of the nobility, but only by a moment.

It at least confirmed that Countess Sural had not been aware of the identities of the newest Ascenders, and had not only chosen to take Margaret under her wing because of that.

Her barely recognizable words only reinforced that belief. “Smile and nod, but agree to nothing.”

It was good advice, as every noble in the room turned to her like hounds who smelled blood.

The nearest Count was slower than Marquess Heartless, who seemed to teleport with how quickly he moved to Countess Sural’s circle. It was rude to move that fast at a party, but he was both the host and not the only one to do so— just the highest Tier and therefore fastest.

He smiled at Countess Sural, but stepped through her retreating entourage to stand before Margaret.

“Earlier you mentioned you had a cooperation with TrueMind and were looking to bring in a few higher Tier amenities to help their workers feel more at home. My personal chef just got an opening. Why don’t I send him your way? He can act as your chef and the Tier 30s' without issue.”

If Matt, someone born on her planet and someone who was known to care about his birth planet, hadn’t just been revealed as the Empire’s newest Ascender, she would have jumped on the offer.

Before she could speak, Countess Sural did so. “Baroness Thresh is still in shock and needs time to process such a generous offer after such a monumental change. As her liege, I’m sure she will look favorably upon your offer, my lord.” The Countesses' eyes swept the rest of the gathered nobles as she added, “Along with everyone else's very generous offers.”

That blunted the initial wave of nobles coming over to congratulate her, but it by no means stopped them. Just reminded them to be civilized.

The first five days of this party, she had been trying to just talk to someone and make some kind of deal which would benefit Lilly, but few had the time for her. Things had changed once she was taken under Countess Sural’s wing, but people were still hesitant to agree to anything long term or large in scale.

A few food producers who were willing to look into expanding into Lilly, a fellow baron who had a hand in the production of children’s toys, and best of all, a single viscount whose family was known for mass producing low Tier arms and armors. They weren’t the best items, nothing mass produced ever was, but weapons and armor were still expensive on Lily. In fact, most of them were imported from neighboring systems, despite her trying to raise a generation of crafters. Before this, the companies who had wanted to work on Lilly hadn’t wanted to include criteria that ensured they sold a portion of their goods locally. And if that wasn't in a contract, she would just be pulling money out of her people's pockets as their hard work went off-world.

Now? Now she had every noble bending over backwards to send their specializations to Lilly, happy to take massive short term losses.

It was incredible what could change in fifteen seconds.

Looking up, she looked to the now ignored hologram of Matt, Liz, and Aster receiving their writs of nobility.

She owed them everything.

She and Lilly both.

***

Agent Delta watched the shocked Baroness Thresh fend off noble advances from his vantage point in a small personal dimension only he could enter. He was just as shocked by the revelation of who the newest Ascenders had been, but it didn’t really affect him.

That his target was related to the Ascenders was interesting, but unimportant.

His job was normally to ensure the Emperor’s hand-appointed noble didn’t fall into any trouble, but with Countess Sural taking the girl under her wing, he expected to be reassigned in the near future.

He wasn’t surprised by the Countess's move; she was a hard-core loyalist despite being from a hereditary noble family.

Noting the change in situation to his superiors, Agent Delta waited and watched.

It took two minutes to get a response.

The Orchestra: Mission accomplished. Report to the recording studio for your debriefing.

Acknowledging the reply, Agent Delta flexed his Talent to appear outside the Marquess's estate. His range was limited, but even if it wasn’t, no one at the party would have seen him. He was far too good for that.

With the news of a set of new Ascenders, he wondered if he could be sent on spy hunting tasks.

He wondered if he had enough merits to force such a mission change.

The war was in full swing, and hunting enemy spies was the best way to contribute.

First, he’d have to see what his handlers had to say, but he suspected that they wanted to put him on another babysitting mission.

***

Director Helen sat in her office idly watching the children below celebrate the fact one of their own was completing the Path. The entire place had shut down for the event. No one was working. The rifts were empty. Food had been brought in from the mainland as the chefs had taken the day off like everyone else.

And it was a big day.

Helen agreed.

She just couldn’t find it in her to enjoy it.

She was tired, and felt every hour of her seven thousand years.

How many of these kids would even be alive next week? Ninety-nine percent? Ninety eight?

How many would be alive next month? Ninety five? Next year? Five years? Ten? Twenty? Fifty?

In fifty years, a full thirty percent would be dead.

She tried to pick them out. She couldn't tell the difference. They sure couldn't. But some of them were walking corpses and didn’t even know it.

And those odds were for the normal times, when these children only had Ascenders to look up to as distant figures. Movie stars, action heroes, larger than life images they dreamt of but nothing more.

But today… Today, Helen knew that these kids had a new set of idols. Idols they would feel they could reach out and touch. Idols who they believed they could become if they just worked hard enough. Delved that one extra rift. Lunged when their training said to back off and re-engage.

All things that would get them killed.

It wouldn’t be the first mistake that got them killed. No, they would do something risky once, survive, shake a little as the adrenaline pumped through their veins, then calm down. They would realize they had survived, and the next time they should hold back, they would be a little less hesitant to lunge.

They had survived once after all. Why not a second?

Why not a third?

That was when the risky behavior became common. Became second nature. Their first instinct was no longer to dodge but to lunge, and that was what got them killed.

It was simple statistics.

Find ten people and get them to flip a coin.

Statistically speaking, half of them would land on crowns and half on shields.

Take the five that flipped crowns and have them flip again.

Now you were down to two. Maybe a third.

Make those two flip again.

There were one in eight odds that one of the flippers had landed on crowns.

Even if they did, have that single person keep flipping their credit, and they would eventually land on a shield.

The Empire was flipping credits. They were looking for the children who could flip a credit a hundred times and have it land on crowns every time.

They were looking for that rare, lucky person who could beat the odds.

And if the Empire was just having children flip credits, that would be fine. But they weren’t. They were asking the children to bet their lives. Over and over again.

She had known all of this going in, she’d reached Tier 15 on The Path, but knowing and seeing were two different things.

The truth was far darker than the public liked to acknowledge.

And with an Ascension to drive recruitment and fervor, Helen knew that she'd be lucky if seventy percent of these children were alive in fifty years. The lucky ones would leave here and take a bad hit that scarred them physically and emotionally. The physical would be fixed with some credits, but the mental scarring would be harder to heal. Hopefully, it would keep them out of a rift for long enough for them to join a guild, which would limit their delving rates to something reasonable or push them into civilian life.

But she knew those would be the outliers. The anomalies. Anyone who made it this far in the Pather system was a little mad in the head. Willing to throw themselves into danger and enjoy it.

If she thought it would work, she would go down and rip the children's limbs off, but she knew that would only drive most of them to try and reach her power level.

She had needed to quit drinking in the first decade of this posting, but she wished she still drank at times like this.

Tea just didn’t have the same kick, and she wanted to drown her bleak thoughts.

But that was exactly why she had stopped drinking.

No matter how somber the occasion was, she couldn’t be drunk. The children needed her at her best. Deserved her at her best.

At least when she wasn’t hiding in her office like she was now.

Only two hundred and nineteen more years and she could escape this thousand year contract.

A thousand years of simply watching a PlayPen had seemed easy money after her delving team had gotten tired of the grind and broke up. She had such good memories of her time on the Path, she thought it would be like a vacation.

What a joke.

She contemplated shutting down the rifts for the next week and sighed. She had done so when Light and Shadow had completed the Path, but she wasn’t sure it had stopped eager kids from killing themselves, as she had hoped. There had still been a spike when she reopened the rifts, despite everything.

Helen just wanted to shake these kids and make them see reason.

But that wasn’t her job.

Her job was to watch the slaughterhouse and ensure it ran smoothly.

And she was good at it.

She had to be.

A better run PlayPen had fewer deaths in both the short and long term.

The better she did her job, the fewer children died.

That might have been the worst part of this job.

If she left her PlayPen to someone else, they would be worse, and the consequences for that would be more dead kids. Replacements were hard to find. People either burnt out like she was, or turned into bitter, angry assholes who disregarded the kids' lives. The Tribunal monitored the former, but they didn’t allow the latter.

Those who cared too much were better in the long term than the opposite.

She could do two hundred more years so a competent replacement could replace her.

She had to.

For the endless stream of this planet's children.

Once this was over, she could go spend a decade in a pleasure world and recover. The Tribunal would ensure she recovered, it was part of the contract she had scoffed at before, but was now eternally grateful for. If she didn’t have a therapist ready on demand, she would have fallen apart in the first decade.

She just wished the Empire didn’t need Ascenders.

But they did.

She was a Tier 20, she had access to most of the EmpireNet and could see the war feeds. Even with two sets of Ascenders, things weren’t good. A third Ascender would help, but a fourth would help more.

So they had to keep having children flip credits.

Helen idly used her spiritual sense to watch the screen and the kids' reactions.

When she first saw the redhead, she nodded. Daughter of nobles, nothing she had to worry about, but she froze at the boy.

Matthew Alexander, now Matthew Moore. Aster Alexander.

She didn’t need the information feeds to tell her who they were. She knew them. She remembered all the foolish ones who came to her attention. They deserved for at least one person to remember their brief lives before they were lost in the annals of history.

Young Matthew had been foolish enough to run headlong into a rift challenge like he was the next coming of Duke Waters, and then an idiot healer tried to steal his egg bond. Griff had taken care of the situation, but she had still been informed and reviewed the incident.

Helen had pegged the boy as one who was going to lunge when he should have retreated one too many times and die.

She had been right.

At least half way right.

He was one who learned that lunging forward worked. He just also happened to be the one that had his credit land on crowns the full hundred times.

As the children down below started to cheer and rave about how someone who had come through the very halls they lived in was now completing The Path of Ascension, Helen wanted to vomit.

That was not the lesson they should be learning.

She’d be lucky if fifty percent of these kids were alive in a decade.

She could read it in their eyes. In their elevated heartbeats. In the cocktail of hormones, their brains were dumping into their bodies. They knew they were going to be the next Matthew Alexander.

It terrified Helen.

Terrified her to her cores.

***

Matthew stood in the bar with his wife, Elizabeth, cradled in his arms.

Her curly hair poked at his chin as she shifted to get out of the way of someone trying to get to the restroom and nearly knocked the almost empty beer out of her hands.

The bar was packed, but they didn’t mind the closeness.

Pressing a kiss to the top of her head, he laughed as his best friend Eddy made a face and shouted over the chatter, “Get a room you two!”

Elizabeth flipped Eddy the middle finger. “We will after this while you go home to little Miss Lefty.”

Eddy shrugged. “I’m sure I can find someone to take me to their home instead. I’m not picky.”

That was true, Matthew well knew. His friend had always been a playboy, which had made their friendship odd to most outsiders.

They had been friends through thick and thin, from diapers to adulthood.

Elizabeth squeezed his hand and Matthew lowered his drink for his wife to sip on as he saw her drink was empty. There was no way they were getting to the front of the bar now.

They tried to shout to chat with Eddy, but it was impossible with the bustle of the bar.

For low Tier 2s like them, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and they didn’t want to spend it in their apartments. They wanted to be among the people, even if most of their friend group was off at the capital of Verlun at the much larger parties.

They had been invited, but Matthew and Elizabeth were more homebodies, and so had declined. Eddy had stuck with them like he always did.

Friends like that were rare.

Matthew chanted along with everyone as the countdown to the face reveal and cheered with everyone else as it happened.

Then he froze as he read the names and felt his pad vibrate.

He also felt Elizabeth’s through their pressed-together bodies.

He saw Eddy’s light up.

He didn’t need to read the message to know what the contents said.

Eddy, thank his heart, was as cool as a cucumber and casually flipped his pad over while hitting the silence button before slipping it into his pocket. His easy grin never even wavered.

Matthew tried to keep the panic down as he started to hyperventilate, and he could feel Elizabeth doing the same, but Eddy slipped in next to them from around the table and hugged them. He whispered in his and Elizabeth's ear, “Play it cool. No reactions. We stay for half an hour, then leave. Do it all with a smile.”

Matthew felt like he was going to be sick, and he felt Elizabeth squeezing his hand painfully hard, but they nodded.

As people cheered and laughed, the three of them joined in the joking.

He almost shit himself when someone remarked how low the odds were that Matthew and Elizabeth shared a name with the newest Ascenders.

When that revelation was known, the entire bar had toasted them.

Someone even remarked how they should have bet at one of the gambling houses.

They laughed it off, and Matthew didn’t know how his voice didn’t stutter as he agreed it was a shame.

When they finally left, they quickly hailed a taxi; this was a nicer part of town, which meant it was one of the automated ones that let the three of them finally react.

The moment they were alone Matthew slumped, Elizabeth pulled her hair so hard her hands shook, while Eddy repeatedly said, “What the fuck!?”

He kept repeating those same three words until they got back to Matthew and Elizabeth’s apartment.

The world seemed to sit still as they sat on the couch and clustered around Matthew’s pad and the displayed message from The Odd One Out gambling hall.

The blue and red logo loomed large in their faces. Matthew had seen their logo for the last three years any time he watched a show or movie. They were a betting house that was trying to get people to gamble on the newest Ascenders identities.

Eddy had brought beer and pizza over one night, and when their ads had come up Elizabeth had sneered at it. She’d called out how the odds were impossible to get right with how many people the gambling house was allowing bets on, which meant they were basically stealing from anyone who bet.

Eddy, a little drunk, had navigated to the site and brought up the number of available bets. Over ten thousand. And that was just locally, at one gambling house.

Jokingly, he searched for his name and bemoaned that there weren't any Eddy’s in the running. He then searched for Matthew, and all three of them were shocked to discover there was a Matthew and Elizabeth pair in the betting pool.

Out of curiosity, more than anything, they had looked into the pair because, what were the odds? A married couple like them but, unlike them, royalty. According to the The Odd One Out gambling hall, the only reason they were on the list was they were the right age, known former Pathers, and the wife, Elizabeth, was a phoenix. Nothing else matched the new Ascender duo, but that slim connection was enough for people to want to bet the odds.

Eddy had laughingly said, “We might as well put some money down with the coincidence. What can it hurt? Let's throw a few credits into the pot.”

The odds had been astronomically low, but here they were looking at three identical life-changing messages.

‘Congratulations: The Odd One Out gambling hall has declared you a winner. Payout: two hundred quattuordecillion credits.’