Chapter Text
Gustave
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The snow and the cold provided a welcome distraction for Gustave as they made their way up the mountainside.
He felt small again, seeing new wonders of the world, enjoying the first-handedness of experience instead of theory. Part of him wished he could somehow bottle it up to bring back to his apprentices, to see their own faces light up from the joy of it.
But mostly it helped him stop thinking about the lake.
There’s just something about it. Yeah, that was one way to put it. He’d glanced at the lake surface as he’d tried to wake Maelle from her daze, and had lost long seconds before he’d been able to pull his eyes away.
We’re already dead. You’re just catching up. He’d tried to banish the words from his mind, but the lake had brought them rushing back.
In the darks waters, his reflection had stared back out at him, dead-eyed and pale. The same expression he’d seen on so many of the other bodies they’d passed here, eyes left wide in death. It had watched him silently, the black waters whispering something he couldn’t quite catch, blood still dripping from its chest and abdomen and pooling on the grass beneath where it stood.
But whatever trance the lake had managed to pulled Maelle into, he’d been able to tear his mind from it. Maybe he was just so used to pushing past the anxiety that rose in him like a tidal wave in this place. Or maybe he was now just so stupidly and stubbornly set on pressing on, despite everything, that it hadn’t been enough to get a grip in him.
He’d snapped out of it, pulled Maelle out of it. Put plenty of distance between them and the lake. But the image still swam in and out of his mind when his guard slipped down.
He squeezed a fistful of snow tighter, focusing on the stinging numbness it sent through his fingers instead of the thoughts that rattled at the back of his head.
The snow-covered crags towered around them as they followed the mountain pass higher and higher up, their breaths frosting on the air before them as the temperatures plummeted. Thankfully Gustave’s chroma-wrapping held; his arm was already sore from where he’d kept his mechanical on overnight, paranoid of being caught off-guard without it, so the last thing he needed was for the metal to end up freezing cold against him, too.
Verso had led them in silence for some time now, despite their own occasional chatter about the snow.
“Do you see your friend often?” Gustave asked, by way of making conversation.
Verso only half-looked back at him, continuing to trudge ahead as he answered. “Uh, he’s been with the Grandis for a while, now.”
That’s not an answer, Gustave wanted to say. But Lune’s head had snapped up.
“The Grandis?” She couldn’t keep the excitement from her voice. “They’re real, too?”
“Real as any of us,” Verso said, his voice strangely flat. But the others didn’t seem to pick up on it, too preoccupied with the snow and the mention of the Grandis.
Do you trust Verso? Lune’s words rang through his head once more. But if they were going to see this Monoco, who Verso evidently hadn’t been to see in some time, then they weren’t taking the same course of action of every other expedition he’d helped before. Something had changed.
The thought send a strange disquiet through him. Something had changed. But what? Why?
He was missing puzzle pieces.
Or maybe he was just seeing patterns where there weren’t any. It was a typical thing for minds to do, after all. Lune and the lake… it had already been a long day, and starting to doubt their ally halfway up a mountain was probably not the best course of action for right then. And he didn’t want to doubt Verso. There were enough other things out there trying to kill them. But he wouldn’t close his eyes to anything that threatened the rest of them if he saw anything else strange.
They kept on walking, the soft crunch of snow underfoot muffling the world around them. He was once again struck with awe of the terrible beauty of this shattered world in which they lived, despite their lives being cut short at the whims of the Paintress and the creatures she’d created. It seemed strange to think that before the Fracture, the people had been able to enjoy all of this, living simple and normal lives. In a different world, Sophie had said. But all they’d needed was a different time. Maybe it was selfish to think that, but he felt as though he was within his rights to have the occasional selfish thought after the hell they’d all been through.
A glint in the sun caught his eye. He had a moment of panic — surely the lake hadn’t somehow followed them here — but instead, metal tracks began to slowly emerge from the snow, their thick rails set into the mountainside. They’d been too covered before to be spotted, but as they headed further up the mountainside the wind had picked up, evidently blowing some of the snow off them.
“Are those train tracks?” he asked, unable to help himself. He caught Maelle rolling her eyes with a smile in the corner of his vision.
“Yeah,” Verso said over a shoulder. “We follow them, they’ll lead us to Monoco.”
It wasn’t long before they passed one of the ancient trains, leaning haphazardly on its rails and frosted with ice and snow. Gustave couldn’t help but slow down as they walked, the engineering behind it fascinating even in its disrepair. He itched to stop and note down every detail in his journal, take some sketches back to Lumière…
That almost made him stop in his tracks. He wasn’t sure if it was the shock of thinking he might actually make it back, or the fear that he wouldn’t. He had to believe – he knew that – but it still stole his breath for a second to have thought so easily, so casually, of returning home. Home . Even the word hurt.
Lune had slowed beside him, inspecting the locomotive along with him.
He glanced over at her, already anticipating the nudge to speed up. “I know. We need to keep moving.” He knew he’d done the same, before they’d decided to head to the Gestral village, so didn’t blame her for it.
She shrugged with a half-smile. “We’re moving in the right direction. We don’t need to exhaust ourselves running up a mountain.”
Gustave snorted softly. “No chance of that.” They’d already all tired themselves running through the forest, after all.
His thoughts drifted back to the lake, the strange way the trees had turned them around afterwards. Lune was quiet for a few moments, lost in her own thoughts.
“What did you see?” she asked quietly. And then, almost as an afterthought, added: “In the lake.”
“Um.” He didn’t want to think about it, really. But they had so little information about anything else, it was wise to share what he could with Lune. “It was… um, I saw me. But… but I think I was…” he swallowed. “I wasn’t…”
He couldn’t say it, couldn’t get the words out. It made it too real, suddenly. Like he might call it into existence. But Lune was nodding, a strange look on her face.
It took a moment for him to shake the lick of anxiety that had bloomed in his chest. “Did you…?”
She shook her head. “Not me. Just… darkness. But it felt…” She paused, searching for the right word. “Suffocating.”
Silence fell between them again for a few minutes. Up ahead, Sciel and Maelle were laughing, both with snow in their hair and the crevices of their uniforms.
“Alright.” Lune nodded at the train. “Go on. What are your thoughts?”
“Hm.” He managed a smile again, thankful for the distraction. “Mostly just excited to see one.”
“Yeah, I guessed you might be.” She bumped his shoulder with hers as they walked, her own smile returning. “ And there are the Grandis to see…”
“Sounds like the others will have to drag us off this mountain.”
Lune snorted, then laughed. “Sounds that way.”
They talked a little more about the trains and steam locomotion as they walked, the tightness of his chest easing as he fell back into familiar topics. Machines, at least, he understood. There was a safety in them, in relying on the fundamentals that rarely diverged from their intended paths. He knew Lune was similar; they’d spent dozens of long nights as the only ones still awake in their corner of Lumière, both lost in their respective researches, silently bringing each other coffees whenever one of them was able to tear themself away for long enough. It helped distract from the existential dread of the Monolith ticking down above them all, giving them both something to pour their energies into as well as something to lose themselves in when everything else became too much. Science and engineering, the sibling disciplines that they found comfort in.
Maelle had joined them sometimes, though she’d often fall asleep in one of the window nooks where she’d sat to watch the people outside pass by as the two of them worked. He’d used to take a break to carry her up to her bed, but she suffered from nightmares so often that she’d ended up asking him to leave her sleeping downstairs with them as long as they were still working, so she wouldn’t be on her own.
There was nostalgia looking back, but it also reignited his determination. So many lives had been stolen between then and now. So many lives would continue to be lost unless they could do something.
Maybe they’d be able to return, go back to their nights of coffees and research and quiet companionship without the threat of the Monolith above them. Maybe then Maelle could sleep sounder, too.
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Slowly, the environment around them began to change as they headed inside the mountain, icy walls curving around them and stalactites dripping from the ceilings. The snow underfoot became denser and harder packed, their footsteps echoing around them. The temperature dropped further, the chill beginning to finally seep through the knit of their chroma. Gustave flexed his hands as they walked to keep the cold from setting in too deeply. He didn’t want stiff fingers if they ended up in a fight.
“Hey, how did you even find this place?” Sciel asked after a while, her fingers trailing on the sparkling walls of frost as they passed through them.
Verso blew a breath over his hands. “The 65s came through here, once.”
After a while, the tunnels of ice opened up into a cavernous space. A huge station stood at one end with wide stone steps leading up into it, a large filigree clock face set into the building’s arch. Great bells hung in suspension above them, the iced metal sparkling like strange jewels where the light hit them.
“This place is…” Maelle turned in a wide circle, head tilted up to take it all in. Faint webs of chroma seemed to splatter the rocks far above their heads, keeping the whole thing from crashing down on them, despite the great gaps in the mountainside that let a fraction of the outside sky peek through. “Wow.”
Gustave couldn’t argue with that. The ancient station was breathtaking in its size and architecture. Golden train carriages hung scattered in the air around them, the thick columns of smooth stone carved out of the mountainside itself. Frozen slush crunched beneath their boots as their moved onto what would once have been the railway platform, two abandoned carriages either side of them. Above, an intricate glasswork ceiling remained partly intact, filtering the colours of the mountain around them into hues of cold blues and purples.
“Here we are. Monoco’s Station.” Verso slowed to a stop in the middle of the platform, glancing around at the empty air. “If Monoco’s not here, that means–”
A rush of movement flew at them from above. Verso already had his sword in hand, blocking the strange bell-ended stick that slammed down, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Slow as ever, mon vieux.”
“Your reflexes remain sharp as ever. I approve.”
Monoco, Gustave could guess. He was different to the other Gestrals they’d met, his white hair more like fur over his body, a large bundle of something like sticks on his back. And the very obvious fact that he spoke their language.
“MOMOOO!” Esquie fluttered at the arch behind them, hovering in the air like a strange balloon.
“Esquie! Did Verso pull you into another adventure?” The strange Gestral glanced them all over. “Mmm. New friends?”
Lune watched him with fascination. “You speak our language?”
Verso shrugged. “We had a lot of time to kill, so… I taught him.”
Eternity did seem to offer that kind of luxury. But it also seemed profoundly lonely. Little information about the progress of previous expeditions ever got back to Lumière; mostly, they just picked up the pieces of what had happened before on their own expeditions. Given the state theirs was in, Gustave suspected that many others hadn’t necessarily had particularly long runs of it. Even if Verso had been helping all of them, that still meant an awful lack of people to talk to for most of the time. Especially if he hadn’t seen Monoco in some time, whatever his reasons for that were.
“Ladies.” Monoco spun his bell-staff around, his attention already turned to Lune, Sciel and Maelle. “Could I OW–” The bell clanged into his head. “–-interest you in a duel?”
None of them the aforementioned ladies could hide their laughs, nor could Gustave.
“Yep, definitely a Gestral.” Maelle managed, voice wobbling as she tried to stop herself from cracking up mid-sentence.
“No point trying to talk until we’ve calmed Monoco down with a ‘relaxing’ fight,” said Verso, his blades appearing once more in his hands. “Be careful though, Monoco’s fighting style is a bit… peculiar.”
Sciel flashed a grin. “Bring it.”
Unlike the other fights they’d been in since landing on the continent, there was a lightheartedness to the sparring that helped lift their spirits. And peculiar seemed to be the right word for Monoco’s style – the Gestral transformed in bright flashes of light between his attacks, taking the shape of various nevrons and mimicking their moves.
“Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo! NEVRON!!” A rapidly incoming Gestral voice broke them from the spar. Noco – the little one they’d met on the way to the village – had barrelled straight for Monoco, stopped short when he saw the rest of them standing there. “Oh, hi.”
Monoco paused mid-swing. “No distractions, son! I’m really busy beating up strangers.”
Laughing, Maelle lowered her sword. “Noco! What’re you doing here?”
The little Gestral looked up at her, the great brush of its hair flopping to the side as it tilted its head. “Even with Esquie, you’re still so slow! I–”
“Noco, you said nevron?” Verso interrupted. He had a particular way of avoiding questions being asked or answered that Gustave had been noticing more and more.
“Oh, yeah! A Stalact is approaching! The Grandis are taking cover. Come on, come on!” Then he was off, running back in the direction he’d come from.
With a little shrug to the others, they set off following him back the way they’d come. Better to deal with the nevron head-on than have it become a problem on its own terms.
Despite coming straight from the fight with Monoco, Gustave thankfully wasn’t too winded. If anything, it had helped warm him up again, shaking away some of the stiffness that the cold had begun to start settling into his joints. But beside him, Verso seemed strangely tired, a slight sway in his step. Evidently it had taken more out of him than he wanted to let on. Gustave supposed he must not be sleeping particularly well; he knew he wasn’t. At least once they’d dealt with this they could all try to get some more rest.
Back out on the concourse, the Stalact stomped and reared its head, making the stalactites above them tremble like tinkling glass.
Monoco had stopped just shy of the steps down. “Friends of Verso. As ‘Honoured Guests’, the first fight is yours! Defeat the Stalact with your fearsome talents.”
“Right,” Sciel laughed. Then the Gestral sat himself down heavily on a wooden box. She blinked. “Oh. You’re serious.”
“Yes, he is.” Verso shot Monoco an amused look. “You little coward.”
The creature was huge, looking for all the world as though it was as carved from ice as the rest of their surroundings, the ridges of its frozen body glistening like wet frost in the cavern’s light. What should have been its head was tapered into a sharp point, blue light pulsing through it.
Wordlessly, they took up their weapons, and the dance began.
Gustave stayed close to Maelle, the two of them working in tandem with their attacks, Verso weaving his own between them. Sciel and Lune took the flank, Lune trying to root it in place as it stomped and thrashed around them with both head and forelegs.
It shook the whole cavern when it jumped, rattling the train carriages on their rails and sending flurries of snow down from the crevices above them. They rolled quickly out of the way of the great trunks of its legs as it landed, Maelle smoothly moving into a defensive stance beside him as they came back up to their feet.
She heaved a breath. “That stupid thing’s going to bring the cavern down!”
It stomped once more. The ceiling shook again, a sound like rumbling thunder echoing around them from far above. Gustave’s head snapped up in time to see a crack run down along one of the thick stalactites, releasing a powdery crumble of ice and rock. Putain. Another impact like that, and it would probably—
The Stalact jumped.
“ Move! ” he yelled, grabbing Maelle by the arm and bodily throwing both of them out of the way. They crashed to the ground inches from where the first stalactite smashed down, scrambling up again as the ceiling continued to shake and rain sharp rock towards them. Hitting the ground so hard had sent a stab of pain through where Renoir had wounded him before, but it was preferable to getting impaled again.
The others scattered, dodging out of the way of the debris and chunks of ice that shattered into skittering pieces across the floor. Next to them, Verso skidded out of the path of another falling block, clearing it only just in time. Without waiting to ask, Gustave seized him by the arm and yanked him along with them, pulling them all out of the path of the jumping nevron as it fell heavily to the ground again, leaving webbing cracks underfoot.
The three of them landed sprawled at the bottom of the steps. Monoco leaned forward on his crate, looking down over them. “Verso, why aren’t you using gradient attacks?”
Verso heaved a breath, pushing himself up onto his elbows. “I don’t need pointers from the one sitting on his lazy arse.”
“You didn’t teach them, did you, you lazy old fart.” It wasn’t a question, but Monoco seemed more amused than anything else.
Sciel and Lune had been keeping the Stalact busy as they pulled themselves back to their feet.
“Very well.” Monoco shifted on his seat, not waiting for Verso’s answer. “I shall generously impart my wisdom.”
Between their strikes and counters, he shouted snippets of instruction. It seemed similar in concept to the kind of counter Verso had shown them back at the battlefield; using the built-up traces of chroma left in the air from their previous attacks and drawing them in to empower a devastating blow.
It was once again Lune who picked it up the fastest. Gustave suspected that at least part of that was driven by her frustration at slipping during the fight with the sword-wielding nevron – the Dualliste, as Verso had referred to it later – and when the Stalact came crashing down to the ground in defeat, he saw a flash of a satisfied smirk on her face.
Monoco stood from the box, stretching his long wooden arms and strolling past them to the fallen nevron. “You’ve found worthy friends, Verso.”
“Jealous?”
Monoco glanced back as he placed his staff on the ground, evidently deciding not to grace the comment with a reply. Gustave couldn’t help but be slightly amused by that. Apparently even Verso’s friends had a tendency to avoid questions.
Monoco disappeared behind the hulking mass of the Stalact, working away at something near its base with slight grunts.
“What are you doing?” Sciel asked, torn between fascination and bewilderment.
“I just need… the foot!” He stood, holding it aloft in the air like a trophy. “Ahah!”
With a triumphant shout and a flash, he blinked into a Stalact.
Verso gave a tired shrug when they all stared at him for some kind of explanation. “He transforms by… collecting nevron feet. Don’t ask me how it works, I’ve never understood.”
With another flash, Monoco reverted to himself, picking up his staff again and wandering back towards them. “Now that we’ve had some good battles to warm the spirits… to what do we owe the pleasure of your company?”
Verso gave them a quick let-me-handle-this look. “We’re heading for Old Lumière.”
“Okay, bye.” Monoco started walking away.
“Hey, come on. Hey, hey!” Verso followed after him, hands raised placatingly. “Hey, look, I know we failed… before , but–”
Gustave didn’t miss his quick glance at Maelle. The others had started chatting away with Noco, and had clearly missed it – he knew otherwise Lune, at least, would be shooting him that look of barely-disguised suspicion. Something about it tugged at his own doubts. He trusted Verso enough to travel and fight with him, but if he was to do anything that hurt the rest of them, Maelle especially…
Gustave stepped closer to Verso and Monoco as they moved away, as inconspicuously as he could, trying to still look as though he was interested in whatever it was Noco was saying.
“Look, you doofus…” Verso’s voice dropped to an urgent whisper, but Gustave could still just about catch his words. He hesitated, seeming to chew over his words before he spoke again. “This our shot, it might be our only shot.”
Only shot? Why? Because they’d been able to defeat the Dualliste together? It wasn’t out of the question; nobody else had before, in however many years it had been around. It was certainly Gustave’s only shot; he and the others had a very tangible deadline tickling down on their chances of success. But the Monolith and Paintress didn’t affect Verso. Gustave wanted to believe that it was out of a newfound concern for the rest of them, but that would be naive of him, and naivety could get them killed in this place.
“This is YOUR only shot. Out of question.” Monoco took a step back, thudding his staff in the ground. “I will never join you again.”
Verso sighed, tilted his head. “There will be a lot of fighting, though.”
Monoco stopped. “Oh yeah. That’s true.”
“Yeah, it’s true.”
“There will be a lot of fighting.”
“Exactly.”
“Count me in then.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
“Yes, good.”
“Noco’s coming, too,” announced Maelle, snapping the three of them back to the others. Gustave did his level best to make it look as though this was not news to him, too.
“Oh, you are?” Verso glanced over at the little Gestral with a faint smile.
Noco nodded, jumping his legs out excitedly and swinging his arms. “Not a lot of merchants go to Old Lumière! There will be tons of rare shiny treasure and then I shall be– THE UNDISPUTED. TOP. MERCHANT. IN THE WORLD!”
Monoco apparently took this all in stride. “As a responsible parent, this is a superb idea. Let us go. To Old Lumière.”
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They headed part of the way down the mountain before stopping to make camp. Ideally they would have been able to sooner, but by that point everyone had started to feel the cold, and so it made more sense to seek out a slightly more temperate spot to rest. Even with a campfire, Gustave suspected they would have felt the chill too deep in their bones to sleep easily otherwise.
His arm had made it through the cold unscathed, for which he was grateful. In theory it should be able to hold up to the extreme temperatures – he did channel lightning through it, after all – but without live testing in freezing conditions it had still been more hypothesis than fact.
They’d stopped low enough that the landscape was more frost-covered than snow-covered, leaving both the Grandis – whom Lune had made sure to talk to extensively on their way past – and the trains behind.
Sciel flopped down on the sparse grass beside Gustave, watching as he checked over his mechanical arm. Lune, Maelle and Monoco had disappeared off to collect extra branches for the fire, leaving them and Verso to set up the camp, but given their rather sparing approach to decorating said camp, it didn’t take very long. Verso leant wearily against a tree nearby, talking quietly with Esquie, who was gesturing away as usual. Something about the large creature always reminded Gustave of a very excitable but very lazy sloth.
“You don’t think you need a break?” Sciel asked softly, jolting him from his thoughts. He’d been trying to adjust the fitting of the mechanical’s socket on him. He paused, fingers pressing into the sore skin of his upper arm. She was right, but he just didn’t want to take the risk. If that man decided to just waltz into their camp while he was resting…
He could still remember the hot agony of the shot lancing through him, tearing a hole through his body. The wetness of the blood spilling out of him, his grasp on consciousness slipping away, the cold fear that hadn’t let go once. He’d make the decision again in a heartbeat if it meant Maelle was safe. But it didn’t change the horrible terror that had seized him then, or threatened him now.
He swallowed it down. “It was made with the requirement of, of continued use in mind.” The specs had been extensive, and his apprentices had gone into it knowing he’d likely not have many chances to sit down and rest once they were on the continent.
“ We’re not.”
He knew Sciel meant well, but he couldn’t help the bite of frustration. “What do you want me to do, Sciel? Be okay with being, being–” He shook his head. “It’s just… safer, this way.”
She looked at him for a long moment, then exhaled in a long sigh. “That Renoir is a real problem, huh.”
“Yeah.” He was suddenly exhausted, the day catching up with him. He hadn’t meant to snap at her.
Sciel plucked out a long blade of grass, twirling it between her fingers. “It does makes you wonder why he did it. Guess immortality is a hell of a thing.”
It was strange that the Paintress would grant that to anyone given her propensity for wiping them all out once a year. It was just one more piece that didn’t make sense.
“Yeah, well. There’s a lot we don’t know about Expedition 0.” Verso wasn’t paying attention to their conversation, but Gustave had dropped his voice anyway.
“I’m surprised by that.” Sciel pondered the faded grass as she twisted it. “Thought you would have scoured all the archives.”
“Well, a lot was lost when the 78s stole the airships. Guess the Council didn’t want anyone else getting ideas.”
Sciel looked at him skeptically. “Come on. Don’t tell me you didn’t even try looking through the old council notes.”
They weren’t public access, but his family had been on or leading the Council for as long as Lumière had existed. He hadn’t wanted the seat, so it had passed over to Emma. Technically he therefore shouldn’t have seen those notes.
Sciel held his gaze, raising an eyebrow. He relented with a sigh. “Okay, yeah, I did. But ,” he held up a finger at her spreading grin, “but, there was nothing in those, either. Whatever happened… spooked them.”
“ Nothing? ”
Gustave shrugged, trying to recall what he could. “Most of the details were left out. Barely any identifying information. There wasn’t even a log of expeditioner names.”
“That’s weird,” Sciel agreed. “Not even our friend Renoir?”
“Nope.” The records barely spoke about it at all. Even swathes of the information they should have had about the rebuilding post-Fracture had been missing. Not to mention anything pre-Fracture. “Census numbers dipped, but a lot of it isn’t attributed. It mentioned the head of an old family joining the Expedition efforts, which could have been Renoir, but the only other information about them was–”
He broke off, heart thudding suddenly in his chest. He thought of the conversation he’d had with Verso when they’d fallen in that pit trap, the way he’d looked when Gustave had asked him about his scar.
Family. It’s… complicated.
Sciel was staring at him, brow creased. “Gustave?”
“He was part of the Expedition efforts.” Gustave spoke slowly, like he was pushing through treacle. But it made sense. Somehow, something about it made perfect, horrible sense. “Along with his son.”
There was a wooden clatter. He hadn’t notice the others had reappeared from their foraging. Lune had dropped the branches she’d been holding, face pale with anger. She’d heard enough of the conversation and read enough in Gustave’s expression to put the same pieces together that he had.
Very slowly, she looked at Verso, who was standing incredibly still. Her fingers twitched, as though seconds from pulling at her chroma. “Care to explain?”
The only sound was the crackling fire.
“Your father? ” Lune pressed, the hard edge of a disbelieving laugh in her voice. “When were you planning on sharing that?”
Unsteadily, Verso pushed off from the tree, waving off a hand as Esquie started to reach for him.
“I don’t think of him as my father, anymore.” His voice was barely above a whisper, as if each word pained him to get out. His admittal looked like a slap across the face for Lune, her eyes narrowing with a sharp bark of a laugh.
“Still–”
Before Sciel could speak, Lune was cutting her off. Nobody else had moved.
“We talked about this. About withholding things.” She punctuated each point with a sharp step towards him, the words hissing through her teeth. “Lying by omission is still lying .”
“I’ve told you everything you need to know–”
“I’d rather make that determination for myself.” She was almost toe-to-toe with him, near incandescent with rage. At some point, Sciel and Gustave had stood up. Monoco and Maelle had frozen where Lune had left them standing, neither of them evidently sure how to react.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Sciel asked slowly.
Verso seemed to be staring into nothing. He closed his eyes for a moment, shook his head. “Because it’s private. And it’s painful and it’s… none of your business. I cut ties with him decades ago.”
“Not our business?” Lune’s voice rose. “He murdered our team. Almost killed–” She caught herself, shaking her head angrily. “How can we trust anything you have to say?”
Despite the cool air, there was a slight sheen of sweat on Verso. He looked too pale, even in the dimming light of the evening.
“Lune…” Gustave started, but she cut him off with a slash of her hand.
“How do we know you’re telling the truth? You could be working with him.”
Verso shook his head. “I’m not–”
“Is that why the other Expeditions failed? Is that why you knew where to find us?”
“Lune,” Gustave warned again, moving towards them. There was something in the slight tremor of Verso’s hands by his sides that Gustave recognised. Far too well, from far too recently. He felt it coming before it happened, but just couldn’t get there in time.
“This is the second time you’ve–” Lune was saying, and then Verso had crumpled, falling like a puppet with its strings cut. Esquie had tried to grab at him but missed, his golden hands only finding air. Lune stopped mid-word, mouth still open.
Gustave reached him as he hit the ground. When his hand met the back of Verso’s jacket, it came away damp and tinged red.
He stared up at Lune, who stared back down at Verso on the ground uncomprehendingly. Sciel raised her eyebrows.
“Well,” she said. “Fuck.”