Vivi waited until Rafael had left the Adventurer's Guild to [Blink] over and drag them somewhere private—which happened to be more than a thousand feet in the air, amidst the bone pillars, with [Invisibility] and other appropriate spells ensuring only they could see and hear each other.
"I underestimated the Fell Apostate," she opened with.
"We both did, my lady," Rafael replied. "And that's something I try to avoid as a matter of habit. I know better than most that a person doesn't need to exist in the spotlight to be a threat."
"These Selrath-Kyn are different from Morningstar, right?" That seemed like a given, but she didn't mind asking Rafael obvious questions. Better to know without any doubt what was going on.
"Morningstar is perhaps the most dangerous criminal organization operating in the mortal kingdoms, but they arose after your disappearance, Lady Vivisari. And I never would have expected one of their members to best draconic royalty in combat."
"And the Fell Apostate is part of Morningstar, too?" Vivi asked. "That's how you knew about him."
Rafael spread his hands, seeming frustrated underneath his composure—something Vivi could only read because of how much time she'd spent speaking with her steward recently. "My information on the topic is limited. To my knowledge, Morningstar is not an organization with a unified purpose. Merely a collection of powerful individuals, each with their own goals, banded together as refugees from the law—or indeed from decency and morality as a whole. The Fell Apostate has been known to work with them, so in that sense, he is a member. Is he in a foundational leadership role, or does he operate as an outside contractor, so to speak? I have no idea."
"I see." A frown pulled at her lips. "I've never heard of the Selrath-Kyn. I wonder if they're the immortal equivalent of Morningstar. And do they have some joint goal?"
"It is rare to find any group of Titled truly united in purpose," Rafael remarked. "Much less a group in the highest echelons of that esteemed rank. The Archbishop has his own goals; the Guardian Sage does too; the Gale of Blades, and you yourself, my lady. I would call it a safe assumption that they are not unified, strictly speaking. Indeed, the Fell Apostate seems to have worked alone today."
Vivi mulled that over. At least she wasn't fighting a whole cabal of insane, powerful ritualists. Probably. "What are we going to do about him?"
Rafael's gaze drifted instinctively up to the gateway, then jerked away the moment his eyes settled. Vivi imagined that nobody enjoyed looking at the bleeding wound in reality, though she wondered if mages found it more unsettling.
"You could pursue," Rafael suggested.
"I could." Vivi didn't get the impression that Rafael wanted her to, but that he was floating a hypothetical. "The trip isn't pleasant, but it won't kill me. Though I guess I shouldn't take that as a guarantee." For all she knew, she had gotten lucky the first time. Even she was out of her depth when it came to this field of magic, and she needed to remind herself of that. Assumptions could end up killing her. "But he knows the gate was left open, and Embralyne said he was fleeing me. He'll have precautions in place. Even ignoring the dangers of going in myself, I doubt I'd be able to track him down." Darkly amused, she asked, "What are the odds he was in over his head and got chewed up by the trip? It was a bumpy ride even for me."
"You could make a better guess than I," Rafael said, though his tone made it clear he doubted they would be so lucky.
"The odds really aren't zero. We underestimated him, but I refuse to believe he understands perfectly what he did here." Her eyes flicked to the breach. "Still, it'd be stupid to assume the problem solved itself."
Did she pursue, then? She was torn on the idea, extremely so. Emotionally speaking, she wanted to. The man had siphoned the souls of an entire city; she itched to fly in, find him, and bring him to justice.
But there were too many risks and too small a chance of success. She doubted she would find him; she couldn't even know whether she would survive the trip. Not to mention how time flowed differently inside. She might be abandoning the human kingdoms to another invasion while she was gone.
She had a problem with impulsiveness, but with so many genuinely catastrophic consequences possible, she would do the smart thing here.
"I shouldn't," she reluctantly said, and explained her prior thought process to Rafael. "Maybe if I'd gotten here a little faster," she said afterward, "or if I didn't have this breach to deal with, and if everyone's souls weren't halfway shredded." She grimaced. "The real question is what he's planning in there."
"You have no theory yourself?"
"I don't know anything about him. And while there's definitely power to be found inside the void, whether he has something specific in mind…" She trailed off. "Again, no idea. Maybe he's just researching void energy like I am. Maybe it's something else entirely. Something I don't know exists." He couldn't have learned about the echoes, so while those might have potential—especially if the man somehow found the Shattered Oracle's concept—she didn't think the Fell Apostate had ventured into the void seeking them. But she couldn't discount the possibility either.
"Hm." Rafael was quiet for a moment. "Princess Embralyne did suggest you could go and speak with the Dragon King if you need to know more about our enemy."
"I'm not sure that was a genuine offer."
"Nor I. It seemed like a passing dismissal, a way to end the questioning. Nevertheless, you could seek him out. That option exists."
Vivi sighed. "I'm just not sure it would end well. Even assuming he's… forgiven me… it's not likely he'll tell me much of anything."
The Dragon King was firmly not her ally. Which wasn't to say they were enemies, though he very well might attack her if she showed up unannounced, and would even be justified in doing so.
Regardless, even if she set that lack of goodwill aside—like, theoretically, if she had gone and asked for his help back when there'd been no grievance between them—he still would've rejected her a hundred times out of a hundred. He hadn't been willing to help with the Cataclysms themselves, so these 'smaller matters' would hardly change his mind.
She also couldn't bully the information out of him. Not just because that would be an abuse of power when the Dragon King was an otherwise peaceful ruler, but also because he was on a small list of individuals that she couldn't say with complete certainty she would win in a fight against.
Obviously, with a two-hundred-level lead, she would still bet on herself. Yet picking a fight with a mythical immortal many thousands of years old, who had subjugated and currently ruled over the most powerful sapient civilization in the world, seemed like a poor idea. Even the Red Tithe had drawn blood, however extenuating the circumstances. If the Dragon King had been the one to discover void energy and had wielded it competently against her, would she have lived through the encounter? For all she knew, that millennia-old immortal, master of magic, did have similar discoveries. Ultimate techniques she didn't have the foggiest idea about.
At a very minimum he was a nascent Cataclysm. And each of those had wielded powers that could pose a threat to her even in her current state. So yes: she had no intention of trying to strong-arm the man, and friendly discussions were unlikely to work either.
"A candid conversation with the Dragon King would be unimaginably valuable," Vivi said. "Especially if he and his people already knew about the dimensional boundary and have studied it. But I just don't think that option is on the table."
"Very well." He had nothing to add, which was rare for him. "Perhaps we should focus on the immediate. The gateway and the soul damage. For my own purposes, can I know what you have planned?"
"Right." Vivi swept her gaze around as she finalized her initial intentions. "The ritual," she said, "I'm going to pack up and take back to Vanguard's vault. I might learn a thing or two from it."
"A foreboding statement, my lady."
Vivi ignored her sarcastic steward and continued, "The gate might fix itself like all the other breaches, but I'm not so sure it will. Whatever the Fell Apostate did, he broke through the boundary in a different way than what we've seen before." Though uncomfortable, she forced herself to study the edges of the perfectly circular gate. Her skull began to pulse after a minute of quiet scrutiny. "Temporarily," she said, "I'll be keeping [Void Barrier] on it. Longer term… maybe I'll have to stitch the hole closed myself."
"Can you?"
"There are lots of things I can do that I don't want to do."
"To be clear, your hesitation comes from…?"
"There's no guarantee of success, and certain branches of magic are best avoided if you're trying not to lose your mind."
"I presumed." Rafael sounded torn between amusement and real concern.
"Plus a gate might be useful."
That had the man pausing. "In what way?"
"Like I said, I don't want to touch the boundary myself. Ever, if possible. That goes both ways—fixing a tear or making one myself." She gestured upward. "Now I have a convenient way in should I ever need it."
She didn't intend to blindly pursue the Fell Apostate, but that didn't mean the idea of venturing into the void was completely off-limits. Maybe it was for the best that she had an emergency gate—whether for research and experiments, as an opportunity to level up against high-tier opponents, or anything else.
Though she might be trying too hard to find a silver lining. She would much rather the breach scabbed over like the others. For all she knew, it was acting as a beacon to any voidgods within a thousand metaphysical miles. The lesser versions of the beasts were certainly swarming and clawing at the barrier of mana, even if they were making zero progress.
"Maybe rather than stitching it together, I'll work on a more permanent barrier," Vivi murmured, thinking aloud for Rafael's sake. "One that I can open and close as I want. Maybe I can find a way to stop voidbeasts from being called to it, too? Mask its presence somehow? Not sure how I'd go about that, but anything's possible, theoretically speaking." She stopped mumbling to herself and spoke a little louder. "Anyway, refreshing the spell every twelve hours will be annoying, and I've been wanting to experiment with void-adjusted enchantments. A semi-permanent seal is top priority."
"I have little advice to give in that regard," Rafael said after a moment. "Too theoretical to make judgments on."
Vivi nodded. "As for healing, I've been thinking about it for a while, but I might go to the Archbishop."
As usual, Rafael intuited what she meant without any need to explain. "With the Codex, you mean."
"It worked beautifully with Hollis, and the Archbishop is a hundred times stronger. I imagine he could heal almost anything using my mana pool. At any rate, he's definitely the most powerful healer I could ask a favor of."
"If you go to him, do not phrase it as requesting a favor," Rafael told her. "He will see it as his duty to heal a city of soul damage, and while he isn't a completely unreasonable man, he will be offended at the implication that you think his help wasn't guaranteed."
"Er, right. Of course."
"And I also hesitate over whether sharing the Codex's existence with him is wise," Rafael continued. "Is this the only path forward?"
"It's the easiest," Vivi said. "By a lot. I'm really not a healer, Rafael. My second-best idea is some very high-level, experimental necromancy that I don't think most people would be comfortable with."
Rafael paused at that. He cleared his throat. "Indeed. Perhaps the Archbishop is best."
Vivi huffed. There was nothing wrong with necromancy—and messing with souls—at a fundamental level. The branch of magic just had a bad reputation because of how it was typically used, and for what. Still, she could see why most people would be hesitant about the idea of mass soul-surgery. Moreover, she had her own reputation to worry about. It might be better that nobody linked 'massively complicated necromantic magic' with the Sorceress.
"I also need a way to heal Elise's brother," Vivi added. "The Archbishop was a frontrunner idea for that too. Even if he has a troublesome personality, he's too useful of a resource when combined with the Codex. He shores up one of my biggest weaknesses."
"The logic is undeniable," Rafael said slowly, reservations clear.
"We can both think on it a bit more. I'm going to get to work."
She held a hand out, and Rafael took it.
After dropping her steward off, Vivi flitted to Saffra. She arrived with a pop of displaced air.
The catgirl had been sitting on a felled log, frowning deeply, a fist on a cheek and a stick tracing idly on the ground. Her head jerked up at the burst of mana, and she bolted to her feet.
"Lady Vivi? Is everything alright?"
"Yes. Sorry to leave like that. It was an emergency."
Saffra could interpret what it meant for an event to qualify as an emergency to the Sorceress, so she paled despite Vivi's initial reassurance. "What happened?"
"Another breach over Prismarche. The Fell Apostate escaped into the void." She sighed and waved a hand. "So I have that to worry about now, but there's not much to be done." She offered her palm to Saffra. "I have work to do. Sorry to cut off your training."
"This matters, like, a thousand times more," Saffra said dubiously.
"I'd take you with me, but I don't think there's much to learn. I have a ritual to study and enchantments to design. Do you want to go back to the manor, or the Institute?"
Saffra hesitated a second. "Isabella, please."
Vivi delivered her apprentice to the mage academy and returned to Prismarche. [Blinking] up to the seven bone shards, she felt some excitement fill her despite all the unfortunate events and discoveries of the past hour. She floated closer, head tilting at the intricate ritual.
Say what you want about that old monster, she thought as her eyes flicked around bone-red engravings, but these are some really fascinating designs.
Time to figure out how they worked.