Chapter 57: Life in Zeron Dawn Base

The rumbling voice stirred a faint memory, though Frost couldn’t quite place it.

He remembered someone speaking through the darkness, but so much of what had happened near the swamp remained blurred by pain that he wasn’t sure whether the familiarity was real.

The man pulled Gwendolyn’s chair closer and sat down, resting his forearms on his knees. "How are you feeling?"

"Better than I should be, apparently," Frost replied, setting the spoon aside. "Thank you for saving me."

The man smiled. "You can thank Gwendolyn for most of that. Getting you here was the easy part."

"Still, if you hadn’t found me..." Frost paused, then shook his head. "I’m grateful."

"Good. Varren," the man said, introducing himself with a small gesture towards his chest. "Most people here just call me Boss. Ava insists on Master, but that’s her problem."

Ava gave him a look from beside the door, which he ignored with practised ease.

Frost wasn’t entirely sure what to make of him. The man was big, though he seemed considerably less intimidating while sitting in a chair than Frost had imagined the leader of a resistance would be.

That didn’t necessarily mean he was harmless.

"Gwendolyn passed on your message," Frost said carefully.

"Which one?"

"The one about me spending the rest of my life working for you."

Varren’s smile widened, while Ava looked towards the wall as though she had heard this conversation before.

"Did she do the laugh?"

"She did."

"Wonderful. She usually gets that part wrong."

Frost stared at him for a moment, wondering whether everyone here had decided to avoid giving him a straight answer. Varren seemed to notice, because he eventually leaned back and waved a hand.

"We’ll discuss what you’re going to do here once you’re properly recovered," he said. "For now, you can stop looking as though I’m about to put a chain around your neck."

"That would be easier if people stopped telling me I’m never leaving."

"Fair point," Varren conceded, though he didn’t sound particularly troubled by it. "But you’re not in any condition to leave right now, are you?"

Frost couldn’t argue with that. He had barely made it through a short walk around the base, and attempting to find his way back to Linden would probably undo the considerable effort everyone had put into keeping him alive.

"There are people outside who probably think I’m dead," he said. "I’d like them to know I’m not."

"I’d rather you don’t, but if it’s troubling you that much, then I can have someone tell them that you are alive. Though, I don’t think I need to remind you that you can’t meet anyone from Linden yet, not until you’ve paid back the life debt you owe. " Varren replied. "Anyway, give me their names later."

It wasn’t a promise, but it was something, and Frost decided not to push the matter immediately.

Instead, he watched the man for a moment before asking the question that had been troubling him since Gwendolyn first mentioned recruitment.

"Why do you want me here anyway?"

Varren raised a brow. "You’d prefer I didn’t?"

"I’d prefer to understand," Frost replied. "I’m not an evolver. I was carrying supplies for people who are, and I couldn’t even protect myself when one of them pushed me towards those creatures."

"Being unable to stop someone stronger from hurting you isn’t particularly unusual," Varren said. "It happens to people with runes too."

"Still, I don’t know what you expect me to do."

"For a start, recover," Varren replied. "After that, we’ll see."

Frost looked down at his hand again, feeling the familiar frustration of trying to explain his situation to someone who didn’t seem to understand how limited his options were. Before he could say anything else, Ava spoke from beside the door.

"Gwendolyn said he was watching the training room."

Varren glanced at her, then back at Frost. "Interested in becoming an evolver?"

"Yeah," Frost admitted. "I have been for a while."

"What’s stopping you?"

He hesitated, already anticipating how ridiculous the answer would sound. Then he let out a breath and decided there wasn’t much point in hiding it from the man who intended to keep him here anyway.

"The affinity tests didn’t find anything," he said. "But my status says I have an affinity for the void."

Varren raised a brow.

"Void?" Varren asked.

Frost nodded. "They tested me again after I told them. Nothing showed up, so they decided I was either lying or losing my mind."

"And you’ve been trying to find a way to learn ever since?"

"Pretty much," Frost replied, glancing towards Ava before continuing. "I’ve been watching people use runes while working as a porter. A friend gave me some notes as well, so I’ve managed to figure out a few things about the inscriptions, but I can’t read the symbols."

Varren studied him for a moment, then reached towards his coat and removed a small metal pin. He held it between two fingers before extending his other hand.

An eerily dark triagram formed before his palm.

Frost stared at it with a wondrous gaze, leaning forward without realising he was doing so. The inscription was far clearer than the fleeting shapes he had been watching during hunts, its sigils holding steady long enough for him to follow their connections.

A small point of darkness gathered before Varren’s hand.

He brought the pin towards it, and the metal began to crumble, breaking into fine black dust that disappeared before it could reach the floor. Frost stared as the last piece vanished, then looked back at the triagram.

"What was that...?"

"Decay," Varren said. "I’d say it’s as abstract as void, but I’m not going to get your hopes up. I can’t say for certain why the test you took didn’t show anything, but if you are certain of what you saw, then I have little reason to doubt you."

For a moment, Frost couldn’t speak.

After all the failed tests, all the doubtful looks, and all the time spent wondering whether he was clinging to something that would never help him, someone was saying that maybe it was possible.

Varren let the triagram fade, watching his expression with a faint smile.

"You’ve been studying inscriptions, you said?"

Frost nodded, his thoughts still struggling to catch up with what he had seen.

"Then tell me what you noticed."

He looked towards the space where the triagram had been and tried to recall its arrangement.

"There were sigils controlling the energy flow," he said slowly. "And another section governing the output. I think I recognised those, but the part connected to the element looked completely unfamiliar."

"Reasonable observations," Varren said. "Especially for someone who can’t read the script."

Frost looked at him, hardly daring to let the question form. "You can read it?"

Varren chuckled, and Ava lowered her gaze, finding something amusing about that particular question.

"I would hope so," he replied. "I’ve been using it for quite a while."

Frost sat quietly for a moment, his remaining doubts struggling against a hope that was suddenly much harder to suppress.

He didn’t know whether his affinity was usable, whether the tests had missed something, or whether Varren could actually help him, but the possibility was sitting close enough that he could ask.

"Could you teach me?"

Varren regarded him for a few moments before leaning forward again, his smile returning.

"Perhaps," he said. "But before that, we should find out whether you can use what your status claims you have."

...

The next couple of days passed without incident, though Frost would have appreciated it if they had also passed without quite so much aching.

Whatever Varren intended to do about his affinity would have to wait until Gwendolyn was satisfied with his recovery, and she seemed determined to make him earn that approval.

For a start, he joined a gentler version of the hellish training regimen every Zero Dawn recruit had to endure.

He wasn’t ready for the full routine yet, having only recently regained the strength to walk around the base without assistance, but even the little they allowed him to do left him exhausted.

Apparently, having his limbs restored didn’t mean the rest of his body was willing to cooperate.

Between sessions, he studied how things worked around the base. It was obviously quite large, though it lacked the grandeur that had made Linden so awe-inspiring when he first saw it.

Most of what he had been allowed to explore consisted of plain corridors and rooms built for practical purposes, and there were only so many doors he could walk past before curiosity began to get the better of him.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t allowed through most of them.

He hadn’t officially joined Zero Dawn yet, which seemed a rather convenient distinction for people who had already told him he couldn’t leave.

So, for now, he was trusted enough to train with their recruits, eat their food, and owe them his life, but not enough to find out what they kept down the next corridor.

The best thing about this whole arrangement, however, was that the quality of life was ten thousand times better than anything he had experienced in the slums.

He also didn’t even need to worry about what he was going to eat tomorrow, and that alone allowed him to sleep somewhat peacefully.

His other problems hadn’t disappeared, of course, but having a proper bed and a full stomach made them a little easier to bear.

"All right, you’re all good now. You should be able to start training in earnest," Gwendolyn said, her furry ears twitching as she smiled at him.