A haze had crept over Garrick's mind, and he stared at the book open before him, his eyes scanning the pages without seeing the words before him. A gentle breeze blew through the open library window and gusted through his short brown locks. The resulting tickling sensation as his hair moved over his forehead and ears snapped him back from the depth of his thoughts, thrusting him back into reality.
Garrick frowned down at the book he held. He recognized the words upon the page from his repeated readings of this same text over the years, but he knew they hadn't faced the same slow scrutiny he had give the pages before them. He flipped back a page and sought the last words he remembered that had faced his methodical mental dissection before his thoughts had thus claimed him. While his eyes scanned the page, his fingers sought the lowball of whiskey on the table beside him.
His hand was the first to be successful, and he drank while his eyes continued their search. Before he could find his place and continue his work, Garrick felt a pressure in his mind and heard a buzzing sound from deep within his ears.
Someone was contacting him.
Setting aside his book and empty glass upon the side table, Garrick held out one hand, palm up and fingers curved as though he were balancing the blade of an invisible sword in the empty space of his palm. As the buzzing in his ears rose, he imagined the cool caress of metal filling his palm and the satisfying weight that accompanied it. He imagined the black case engraved with the image of a unicorn, the symbol of the Nascent, upon its back and a front that was speckled with an array of dials and buttons. And as he imagined it, a handheld computer – his Chimera – appeared in his hand, summoned from the depths of his mind and grounded in reality by the power of his will.
The screen of the Chimera flashed a message confirming that someone was trying to reach him, so with one thumb, he pushed the button that would accept the communication.
The image of his sister Thistle appeared before him as though projected into the library via hologram. However, Garrick knew that no one else could see his sister but him, as the Chimera inserted her image directly into his eye.
What he could see of the wall behind her was lined with training swords and racks of polished armor, and although this projection of Thistle was cropped at her chest, it was enough to show that she wore her leather baldric over one shoulder, which no doubt meant that her dark sword Umbre was hanging at her waist.
Garrick straightened in his seat. "Is something wrong?" he asked. The words didn't pass through his lips but instead were only uttered in his mind. His focus upon this message, however, made them as concrete as the Chimera in his hand.
Thistle shook her head. "I'm fine," she said. "Are you free to spar? I'm looking for new opponents for Bernard. It's no good if he only fights against me, and I fear his progress is stagnating." Her words vibrated in Garrick's ears even though Thistle's lips hadn't moved.
Garrick let out a relieved sigh and leaned back in his chair. "I could help in an hour. I have a theory I'm pursuing and don't want to lose my momentum."
Thistle pursed her lips. "A theory on what?" Her words were stiff.
Garrick's mind started to race for some lie, but he worried that she would pick up on his surface thoughts through their mental link. The truth was easier, even if he already had a pretty good idea as to how she'd react to it. "On how to find Conrad and bring him home."
Thistle's eyes narrowed into a glare, and her lip twitched. "This still?" Her words were as sharp as any blade. "We're better off without that miserable dolt bumbling around the palace, drunkenly hitting on servants!"
"I'm just worried because we haven't been able to reach him since the war, and-"
Thistle cut him off. "And it's been a blissful ninety eight years," she finished for him. "If only Blaine and Cerulie would think to crawl into the same hole Conrad did. I'm tired of seeing traitors wandering free in my home."
Garrick couldn't help but wonder why Thistle was bringing in more of their siblings into her rant. The only connection that he could see was that she viewed Conrad as a traitor as well, but that went against everything Garrick knew about Conrad. "Neither Blaine nor Cerulie have been by for long since the war," he said in an attempt to calm her.
"But they always drop in unannounced, forcing us to scrambled together preparations after it's already too late." Her expression had twisted into a scowl. "You're wasting your time, Garrick, just as you're wasting mine right now. Just admit Conrad's dead. You'll feel better thinking like that. I know I do."
"Thistle-"
But it was too late. She had vanished from his sight.
Garrick sighed and turned his attention from the Chimera in his hand. With its existence no longer sustained by his concentration, the computer vanished once more.
Thistle was wrong. He knew that much. If Conrad were dead, then a corpse should have turned up eventually. Conrad had to be alive. It was just a matter of finding him.
However, poring over the books that recounted each of their stories during the war was getting him nowhere. Besides, Conrad had been alive to tell the scribe everything after the war's end. How could he have gotten himself killed after their troubles were over? More likely, he was held captive by some force that was keeping him from contacting his family. And if that were true, who knew what horrors he had suffered over the years?
Garrick forced these thoughts away before they could worry their way into his gut. Fretting about Conrad's safety wouldn't magically bring him home. He had to go out and look for him.
While there had been countless attempts to seek Conrad with a Chimera, all of them had failed.
However, Garrick knew he couldn't stay here and do nothing with these worries screaming in his head. He stood and willed his Chimera to return to his palm and pressed the button necessary for the machine to construct a tunnel for him to travel through.
A message appeared upon the screen. "What is your desire?" A cursor blinked below these words as it awaited Garrick's input.
His hand hesitated over the keys. He already knew that just putting in his brother's name wasn't enough, so he'd have to take a different approach if he wanted results. A thought came to his mind, and his fingers danced deftly over the keys to spell out his message.
"The merest trace of Conrad," he read back to himself once he'd finished his typing. It was something different, at least. Finding it suitable for now, Garrick opened another menu within the Chimera and scrolled through the list of names and locations that popped up.
The Chimera was good at finding anything its owner wanted, but just like how a bloodhound follows a scent, the computer needed something to follow through the old worlds to better find its source. Thankfully, Garrick had just the thing for his Chimera to catch Conrad's metaphorical scent. By selecting Conrad's name from the list, Garrick's Chimera accessed the long string of numbers, letters, and equations that made up the fingerprint of his missing brother's Chimera. And then, with another press of a button, the tunnel opened up before him, splitting the library apart like light refracted through a prism. Before him, the white light of the library split into a rainbow of worlds as far as his eye could see, leading him away from his home in the Nascent and deep into the old worlds.
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