Chapter 88: Half Answers
The walk back toward Evergreen City was quieter than Lisa expected it to be.
There were no trumpets, nor was there roaring, just the sound of boots against dirt and the occasional low murmur from Marcus’s Bearers up ahead.
Darlus hadn’t said much since they left the clearing. He kept glancing back over his shoulder, even though there was nothing left to see anymore, just trees and the fading light of dusk settling over the forest.
"You keep doing that," Lisa said with a slightly frustrated tone.
"Doing what?"
"Looking back. He’s not there anymore. He has made his choice."
"I know. Doesn’t stop me from feeling like we just left him to get eaten. I am his teacher, aren’t I?" Darlus let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh.
Lisa didn’t answer right away. The guilt sat in her chest too, and it was heavier than she wanted to admit, but admitting it out loud felt like giving it more room to grow than she felt it deserved.
"He made his choice, and we made ours," she said finally.
"Doesn’t make it feel any better," Darlus interjected.
"It’s not supposed to feel better," Lisa said.
"It’s supposed to keep him alive long enough for us to figure out what’s actually going on."
Darlus didn’t respond to that; he just kept walking, with his shoulders still slumped in a way that looked almost completely opposite to his style.
Lisa forced herself to stop thinking about it. Dwelling on Morden’s decision wasn’t going to change anything, and she needed her head clear for whatever came next.
So instead, she turned her attention to the man walking a few paces ahead of them.
"Marcus," she called out with a tone that lacked the respect it was supposed to have.
He glanced back, slowing his pace slightly until she caught up beside him.
"What exactly is going on here?" she asked.
"Why does any of this need protecting? We’re just Bearers, same as everyone else in that city."
Marcus was quiet for a moment, his eyes scanning the treeline out of habit before he answered.
"You’re not just any Bearers," he said.
"Not anymore, at least not since you came back from wherever you disappeared to."
"The Old World?" Lisa said.
"That’s part of it, yes. Contact with a place like that changes things. It draws attention, and it is the kind of attention that isn’t always friendly." Marcus nodded slowly.
"What kind of attention?" Darlus asked, finally speaking up again.
Marcus turned to look directly at him this time with a fully calculative expression on his face.
"That depends entirely on what you brought back with you."
Darlus’s jaw tightened, though it was just slightly; it was enough for Lisa to notice.
"Did something happen to you there?" Marcus asked, his voice more direct now.
"Anything unusual, anything that felt like it shouldn’t have happened?"
"Nothing happened. I just woke up in a tunnel and waited it out until I got pulled back." Darlus shook his head.
Marcus studied him for a long moment with a face that showed that he was clearly not entirely convinced, but he didn’t push further, just turned back around and kept walking.
Lisa glanced sideways at Darlus with her usual attentive face, and again she caught the way his eyes had shifted somewhere distant for just a second before snapping back to normal.
She didn’t say anything for now, but she filed it away all the same.
’Everyone’s hiding something tonight,’ she thought.
****Elsewhere****
Morden walked among the beasts with far less confidence than he wanted to show. They didn’t attack, they didn’t even growl as he passed, but every set of eyes tracked his movement with so much intensity that it made his skin crawl.
The Flaming Lion led him deeper into the forest; they went past some broken trees and scorched earth and continued walking until the ground sloped downward into a wide, cave-like den lit faintly by embers scattered across the floor.
The heat radiating off the walls was thick enough to make Morden’s shirt cling to his skin within seconds.
"So," Morden said once they’d stopped moving. "Are you going to actually answer my questions now, or are we just going to stand here?"
"Ask," the Lion said simply.
"What exactly are attributes?"
"A mark, or you can call it a scar, they are usually given, not earned," the Flaming Lion said.
"That’s not an answer," Morden rebutted
"It’s the truth, even if it isn’t the whole of it."
Morden crossed his arms, trying to keep his frustration from actually showing in his face or his voice.
"Fine. Why does having one make people want to hunt me down?"
"Because marks like yours are rarely given without reason," the Lion said.
"And reasons like that tend to matter to people with power."
"What people?"
"That depends on who you ask."
Morden clicked his tongue in frustration, and it wasn’t completely baseless; every answer just led to another question, and he was starting to feel like he was chasing his own tail.
"Why does the Omnisphere itself react to it? The notification when we arrived. None of that felt random."
"Because it isn’t," the Lion said.
"The Omnisphere notices things that don’t belong to the natural order of growth. Your kind unsettles it."
"My kind," Morden repeated. "So there’s more than one type."
"There is."
"And Darlus? Lisa? Do either of them have one too?"
The lion’s golden eyes flickered slightly at that, the closest thing to hesitation Morden had seen from it all night.
"That isn’t mine to answer," the flaming lion replied.
Morden’s frustration finally cracked through. "Every single thing you’ve told me tonight has been half of something. I need real answers, not riddles."
The lion was quiet for a moment, flames along its mane dimming slightly, like it was actually considering what to say next.
Morden took the silence as an opening.
"Fine, then answer me this one," he said, his voice steady despite everything churning underneath it.
"How do attributes affect the Omnisphere itself?"