Chapter 41: The Four Great Spirit-Seeds

Lucan introduced himself without beating around the bush: "I'm with the Concord myself, but I do odd jobs for other bloodborn organizations now and then. This time I'm representing the Raging Gale. There are a few things they'd like to learn from you."

Two of the Raging Gale's men had died at Sebastian's hands, and Nathan had always felt that business wouldn't end that easily—but he'd never imagined the Raging Gale would skip Sebastian entirely and come looking for him instead.

Nathan didn't know Lucan's background, so he kept his mouth shut—less said, fewer mistakes.

Lucan gave a light cough, and his very first question went straight for the throat: "Do you know Thaddeus and Ubald?"

Nathan thought it over and decided to answer on the sincere side: "If you mean that big fierce hulk and the guy in the old army-surplus jacket, then yeah, I sort of know them—met twice. Once was on Elderrow, and the other time was on... I forget which street. Anyway, that was the time Sebastian killed them."

The bloodborn world's Four Hosts were fully a match for the Concord; even if the Raging Gale alone ran a notch weaker, it was still a colossus he couldn't afford to provoke—so Nathan told the plain truth and sold Sebastian out first.

Lucan couldn't hold back a laugh. "The killer being Sebastian—the Raging Gale already knows that. The two of them were wearing trackers that beam combat data back to Legion headquarters. What I mainly want to understand is what Sebastian has been up to on Elderrow."

Nathan couldn't resist sounding a little suspicious: "He's digging around in that abandoned Between. Shouldn't everyone on Elderrow know that? Why come ask me?"

Lucan gave an awkward smile. "I've got a record. They won't let me in."

Between being awed by Lucan's Six-Eyed gift and staggered by the style of his entrance—not just flunkies at his beck and call, but dining at a place this high-end—Nathan, who had never been to the Atlas Grand Hotel but had heard it was steep, had instinctively filed the man away as a big shot.

That one line, though, let the bottom out of the act, and Nathan came to his senses on the spot, blurting: "Oh—so you're one of those men with troubles he can't speak of!"

Lucan very nearly rose to the bait and shot back the old snake-oil pitch—"got troubles you can't discuss? One swig and they're gone!"—his face went even more awkward; he coughed out a laugh, and with great deliberation steered the conversation elsewhere: "I was there the night of the Starfall Dew. You really packed it away—second only to Granny Rowan, Marshal Nephele, and Kestrel."

Nathan was mildly surprised. He was no wide-eyed "freshman bloodborn" anymore—he'd long known that everyone who showed up that night was a bloodborn—but running into a bloodborn from his own "graduating class," as it were, for the first time still carried a strong whiff of camaraderie.

He let his guard down a notch and groused: "I swallowed all that Starfall Dew and only got five hundred bond-power. Totally different from the legend—one blob of the stuff is supposed to be worth sixty years of Art."

Lucan roared with laughter, then patiently explained: "To fully refine Starfall Dew you need a top-of-the-line Art method. Managing to extract one or two tenths of the draught's essence already counts as impressive."

Nathan put on a shocked face while thinking privately: "No wonder my bond-power rating suddenly skyrocketed once I awakened a lineage inheritance—I'd been refining it all wrong before."

Lucan was a great talker and warm with it, laying out heaps of bloodborn-world common knowledge in a steady, easy flow—which broadened Nathan's horizons considerably. They hit it off, and most of the initial distance between them dissolved.

Stolen story; please report.

Lucan didn't hide it either: "I'm no Raging Gale member—I just took ten thousand starlings off them to gather intel. I know a bit about that abandoned Between on Elderrow too. It was originally a training ground with a pretty resounding name: the Hourbound Grove. But it's been derelict for ages. Supposedly, because of the void turbulence, it's riddled with void fissures—should be impossible to get into, right?"

Nathan spread his hands. "Why do you think Sebastian press-ganged me in the first place—because I awakened the Yggdrasil Line and can shrug off void fissures!"

Lucan had known all this already, of course. He sighed: "Let me just give it to you straight. Greyhaven is the Concord territory, but it's not that the Raging Gale couldn't send an expert to pull off an assassination—they just don't think it pencils out. That's why they've tolerated Sebastian, and why they'd rather borrow your abilities to carry a few things out of the Hourbound Grove."

After all those loops, Lucan had finally come out with the truth, and it clicked for Nathan. He had to ask: "What does the Raging Gale need? Can't they find anyone to get into the Hourbound Grove?"

Lucan scratched his head. "Looks like you still don't really know the Hourbound Grove's roots. Let me give you the full rundown!"

Lucan cleared his throat and began: "After endless archaeological study by bloodborn and human magi alike, the Hourbound Grove is basically confirmed as a genuine piece of the Nine-Sphere Citadel—a fragment of the ancient Citadel Sovereign's back garden—with a small remnant of ascendant seeds surviving in it. Only, that small batch of seeds, warped by the void turbulence, has almost all mutated. The Concord couldn't monopolize the development alone, so it teamed up with the Order of the Deathless—the best at practicing plant-type bloodborn creatures—the Order of the Eastern Sky—the best at raising war-beasts—along with Mythos, the broadest in technology and richest in patents, and the most mysterious of all, the Order of the Primal One, holding vast troves of ancient wonders—to convert the Between into a training ground."

Nathan cut in: "So... of all the relics inside, apart from the rewards the Concord and the four Orders stocked it with later, the most precious things are those Nine-Sphere Citadel ascendant seeds, right?"

Lucan nodded over and over. "Exactly! Those ascendant seeds. The Raging Gale wants the rootstock of the Requiem Lily, a living specimen of Drakefern, Goldspear Thistle, and Hourlost Bloom—those four ascendant seeds."

Nathan cast his mind back and realized that the chain-quest scroll he'd picked up actually contained two quests—one involving Drakefern, one involving Hourlost Bloom—and claiming those two rewards wouldn't be too hard for him. But he'd never heard of the Requiem Lily's rootstock or Goldspear Thistle, and had no idea what they looked like.

Lucan made a light press at his chest, and a transparent light-screen lit up at once. Nathan instinctively glanced left and right—but nobody around them was paying the slightest attention.

Lucan smiled. "Relax—anyone without spiritual power or vitae can't see a war-beast's light-screen. This war-beast of mine cost me a pretty penny, and sadly it has zero combat skills; it only works as a portable computer. Let me give you the show—the illustrated rundown on these ascendant seeds."

Nathan was more than a little dumbstruck, watching Lucan—like some product manager—smoothly run a PowerPoint deck for him.

By now he felt none of that high-and-mighty mystique about the guy at all; the picture matched, more and more, some schleppy salesman in a suit, glumly gnawing a burger and pitching his wares up and down the street.