Sanguine Prince | Chapter 20: A Father's Love (Second Draft)

Arcturus Valoura, Senior, stood in silence while his wife wept into his shoulder.

His rusty-brown eyes were cold, staring past his partner’s shoulder toward the mantle of their fireplace, showing a framed picture of him, his wife, and their son—the son that had been stolen from them. Not killed, not the way that the authorities believed. Arcturus Senior knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the tragedy at Yale hadn’t been a random incidence of violence, like so many other tragedies across the United States.

He knew, without every iota of conviction, that the attack had been targeted. His eyes drifted down to Clarissa, and his heart hardened in his chest. For over twenty years he’d been with her, keeping her safe, building a life, and working to escape the shadow that haunted every step he took—always with one eye over his shoulder, always waiting for the dagger he suspected was angled at his spine.

For two decades he had waited, prepared, trained his son to be ready.

Then when it came, instead of finding him, it had found his boy.

“Clarissa,” he said softly to his wife, shifting back a step to gently take her face in his hands, “I need to see to something. I’ll be back in just a short while, okay?”

His wife stared at him with unfocused eyes, distant with grief, and shrouded with despair. His heart broke at seeing her so wounded, and knowing she couldn’t understand why he wasn’t—why his own reaction was so much colder, so much calmer. There were things he should have told her years prior, and he knew it was past time he came clean—but not yet. Not until he confirmed something. There was no point in shattering his wife further, if what he suspected wasn’t true.

“I…” Clarissa trailed off, drawing in a ragged breath, and wiped her eyes with a hiccup. “I’m going to make some tea. I—I’ll be here. Please don’t take too long.”

“I won’t, my love,” he said to her gently, and bent to kiss her forehead. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

Clarissa nodded, and another trembling sob racked her body.

“I sh-should call the Warmans, they—I’ll call them. I can’t imagine what they… what we… oh god, Arcturus, our son!”

Clarissa let out another body-shaking sob, and Arcturus bit down on his need to move, his need to take action, and instead pulled her back into her arms. There was still time, and his wife needed him. If what he suspected, what he almost knew to be true was in fact reality, then he understood that he could spare the time to be a good husband—to be there for her at the worst moment of her life.

Because if he was wrong, it would the worst moment of his, too.

He and Clarissa settled on the couch as the mother of his child curled up upon it and wept against his chest, her body heaving with grief and her hands shaking as she clutched his shirt. Arcturus said nothing, because any words he could use were based solely in supposition—or worse, platitudes of shared grief. The truth was, he was not aggrieved; he was enraged. A fury hot enough to incinerate a continent burned within him, and yet he could never show her, never show anyone.

Not until he knew the truth.

It was an hour later that he finally left her, curled up on the couch asleep, having cried herself into exhaustion. Arcturus covered his wife with a blanket they’d often used when their erstwhile son had flopped on the same couch, and she gripped it like it were a lifeline—curling into it and inhaling the lingering scent of their only child in the depths of her sleep.

His eyes traced his wife, so beautiful, so full of radiance, and his gaze hardened.

Arcturus Senior turned and moved quietly out of the living room, advancing with a purposeful martial stride toward the stairs leading to the basement. He took them two at a time, the rage inside his body bubbling more fervently as he descended and reached the bottom. His left hand rose to flip the light switch automatically and he moved deeper into the, by all accounts, mundane storage area.

His sure steps guiding him past stacked boxes, discarded toys from his son’s youth, and half-built projects he’d been working on with Junior. A half-finished suit of armor here, a painstakingly crafted longbow there, a set of throwing knives he’d forged himself during a particularly intense fit of pique. His eyes slid over them with memory, but he did not permit them to distract him. He had to be sure, before the rage ate his soul to ribbons.

Arcturus Senior came to a halt beside the back-up generator for the house, eyeing the several-hundred-thousand-dollar expense in silence, and then reached out to settle his hand on the seemingly-plain wall beside it. He moved his palm carefully, tracing a pattern that he knew by heart, and then stilled when he finished. His left hand slipped into his pocket and retrieved his knife, flipping it open and smoothly cutting a line across his right palm.

The sting was entirely irrelevant to him, other than a feeling of incredulity at the pain that had never truly faded. He was so weak, now. Not as weak as his enemies may have suspected, but still too weak to matter. For the moment, at least.

His right hand returned to the wall to press the new laceration to the stone, and Arcturus let a whisper of grim satisfaction flow through him when a sigil illuminated on the wall—an Aetheric Rune that only he knew about. His blood catalyzed it, and the wall abruptly shifted, seamlessly sliding backward and to the right to slot into a pre-made sheath for the slab of stone. The chamber beyond was why he’d handled the plans for their dream house personally.

He couldn’t risk anyone else finding what lay within.

Arcturus stepped forward and pressed his right hand to the wall on the other side, signaling the counter-rune to shut it as he turned back and flicked on the light switch. Lights flickered to life within the room, revealing a large space easily big enough to fit several large SUVs. Aether had its place, but in a source-shard as magically inert as Earth, he’d made do with mundane methods where necessary—the generator was part of that.

Arcturus Senior took stock in silence.

The room was filled with research papers, stacked neatly and filed by order of date and location on large, bolted-down tables. Maps were pinned to the walls with meticulously drawn identifiers upon them, some from his travels with his family, some from his time before he’d met the woman he married. His eyes trailed over all of them for a moment in remembered frustration, and then he advanced to the main attraction: an armor-stand bearing a set of masterwork golden warplate, complete with a visored, winged helmet that hadn’t shown even an inkling of rust in over twenty years.

His gaze moved down to the table beside the mounted armor, and he beheld the most dangerous item within the hidden room: a gold-adorned bastard sword hilt, its crossguard flowing into two predatory eagle heads, with a perfectly-cut cardinal ruby inset to where the blade would normally be mounted. He lifted his hand and glanced at it, satisfied to see that his hand had already healed, and reached out to pick up the sword.

It felt warm in his grasp, like an old friend welcoming him back.

His eyes traced the subtle striations and ruby-red veins that ran in millimeter-thick lines across the weapon handle, remembering how each one had been masterfully-made at his request. The smith that had forged the weapon had been peerless, overlooked by all but the most aware and savvy of those that sought a true master craftsman’s work. He remembered the day he’d been gifted the weapon, and the way it had hummed in joy at finally being united with him.

“Hello, Invictus,” he said to the weapon fondly, feeling it hum in approval of his recognition. “It’s been too long.”

His hand lowered, still holding the sword hilt, and he clipped it to a ready-made point on his belt, stitched carefully onto every set of pants he wore—just in case. His eyes moved then back to the table, and Arcturus Senior reached out to feel along its smooth, metallic-silver surface; drifting his questing fingers until he found what he was looking for, and depressed a hidden button.

“Identify,” a robotic voice commanded neutrally.

“Valoura, Arcturus Titus,” Senior said coldly, voice edged with steel he could not alleviate. Not until he knew. Not until he was certain.

“Identify validated. Password?”

Arcturus smiled mirthlessly.

“Fallen Eagle.”

“Password validated. Welcome back, Your Highness.”

Arcturus lowered his eyes to the table when the button he’d depressed outlined in blue, and a small rectangle segregated itself from the remainder of the table, sliding apart to reveal a hidden compartment within. He reached out and plucked the small, cloth-wrapped bundle lurking inside, setting it down on the table proper with a grimace.

Moment of truth.

Tensing himself for what he might learn, Arcturus Titus Valoura unwrapped the small, innocuous-looking item within: a single gem, equal parts diamond and jet, which seemed to capture the light of the room as well as drink it, creating a dichotomous and paradoxical patch of light mixed with abyssal darkness within the gem itself.

His eyes focused on it and he braced his hands on the table, taking a breath as he centered his mind. It had been a long, long time since he’d wielded Aether—but his reserves weren’t empty. Terrans had been traversing the source-shards for thousands of Earth years, coming and going as much out of interest as by intent. Some of the greatest legends of human history were either children of those excursions, or Terran emigrants tired of the Source’s dogmatic imperialism.

Aether existed on Earth, it was just thin—almost impossible to find without a high enough cultivation level. Thankfully for Arcturus, he had been at the apex of his kind, despite it mattering little in the end.

Aether bloomed in his desiccated core with a flicker of immolation, suffusing him with the strangled warmth of his elemental attribute and surging forgotten power through his veins. He had to be cautious when he drew on the Source’s power—it was a beacon to those that might have been looking for him, though the multi-layered lead reinforcement of the chamber certainly mitigated the risk.

The only access point for him to draw the Aether from was the floor on which he stood, carefully built to allow access to Earth’s crust without interference. What Aether existed was thermic, residing deep within the planet’s living flesh. It was the same for all source-shards, depending on their potency—it never truly started in the atmosphere, it always started from the world’s molten core; its heart.

Arcturus Titus took a breath as the power roiled within him, and then reached out to the gem, very gently pressing his forefinger against its crystalline exterior.

Then, he injected Aether.

When he’d first received the sliver, it had changed his life: awakening him to truths that had resulted in one of his closest friends branding him a heretic upon confessing his new knowledge, and hunting him across the world, to near the heart of the Blighted Lands. His trust in Romulus had almost gotten him, and everyone he’d loved, murdered overnight.

It was a trust he’d believed in, given their relationship from boyhood—but the moment he’d given his revelations to Romulus, the Imperial Crown-Prince had forsaken him, and put into motion the sequence of events that had ended in the death of his Gilded Aegis. It was an error of cosmic stupidity, one that Arcturus had reflected on and regretted for years—though if given the choice, he’d make it again, for two simple reasons: Clarissa, and Regis.

Arcturus’ thoughts returned to the gem immediately when he felt the Aether react, and his eyes narrowed in unblinking focus. Power flickered across the jewel as it coruscated and darkened in equal measure, the Aether roiling across it in confusion as it seemed to be hunting something within the tiny mineral piece. Seconds passed into minutes as Arcturus stared, waiting, hoping, demanding the answer he sought.

Finally, he received it: the Aether settled.

It lit up white, the color of Creation—the color of Life.

Arcturus’ eyes widened, and his grin was savage when it came, ameliorating the grief and replacing it with an ocean of relief. Part of him had doubted, but now he knew for certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt: his son lived. His son lived, and had found a way to return to his true homeworld, in a path Arcturus Titus would never have been willing to test, for fear of its failure.

Arcturus Regis was Secondborn.

His son had become a Daeva.

Arcturus Titus let out a booming laugh of approval, and slammed his fist against the table with vicious satisfaction.

“Good boy,” he said with relief, his eyes misting despite himself. “Don’t worry, junior. I won’t leave you to those wolves on your lonesome.”

His hand reached down, instinctively, to caress the hilt of Invictus.

The Aetherblade hummed in readiness.

First things first, he thought as he wrapped up the gem and returned it to storage, turning back to the room. I need to explain everything to Clarissa, and then I need to hunt down some rats that escaped their cage. After that, I’ll find their Aether source and Gateway, and once that’s finished…

Arcturus Titus’ smile was for himself alone, but it was a smile that had once terrified demi-gods, and given an Empire reason to fear.

…I’m coming home, son. Wait for me, just a little while longer.