“Well, he didn’t pull this farce off on his own,” I said. “He had a real Incarnate helping him most of the time.”
“Gamma,” Endow uttered. “It all started with her. We should have realized what she was capable of.”
“Don’t be angry with her,” Rune said to Endow. “She just couldn’t watch any more of her children die.” He then turned to me, saying, “If you know that Static wasn’t really an Incarnate, then you probably know what Gamma did.”
I nodded. “Cerek told me — she shared her sivrrut with her son.”
Endow looked at me in surprise. “You spoke to Cerek?”
“Sort of,” I replied, making a waffling motion with my hand. I then proceeded to tell them about my two initial interactions with Gamma’s laamuffal. They listened dutifully and without comment, although I did notice them share a look when I mentioned going into the fresco.
“So he left you clues on a bathroom mirror,” Rune summed up when I finished. “How very noir of him.”
“Well, you did lay this out as a murder mystery,” I reminded him. “Sometimes life really does imitate art.”
“So it seems,” Rune stated. “Anyway, you’re saying the two clues that Cerek gave you told you that Gamma was sharing her power with her son?”
“They told me that, as well as a few other things,” I clarified.
Rune looked as though he had further commentary, but Endow cut him off.
“But I don’t understand,” she interjected. “Why wouldn’t Cerek just come to one of us Incarnates? We’d have actually been able to talk to him in his astral form and would have been able to stop all this carnage.”
“I think he was acting out of loyalty to Gamma,” I said. “He was still trying to save her son.”
“How?” Endow asked.
“Hold on,” Rune chimed in. “We’re hopscotching around a bit. It might be better if we try to take this in order.”
“Fine with me,” I declared. “We were talking about Gamma sharing power with her son.”
“Yes,” Endow said. “She’d already outlived a number of her children. Static was her youngest, and she couldn’t bear the notion of seeing him grow old and die.”
“So she cooked up a scheme where she shared her power with him — put half of it at his disposal — but told all of us that he was an Incarnate,” Rune added.
“But couldn’t you guys sense that her power had diminished?” I asked. “Couldn’t you tell it had been chopped in half?”
“There’s no yardstick for measuring sivrrut,” Rune protested. “And as long as she had enough to carry out her duties, nobody cared.”
“But surely there’s some way to gauge it,” I opined.
“I know it seems that way,” Endow said, “but the scope of your question is broader than you think.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Think of it this way,” Rune interjected. “Imagine that I’m going to live forever, but I can give you half of my lifespan. How long is that? What’s half of infinity? Because that’s what your question boils down to with respect to Gamma sharing her power.”
My brow furrowed as I mentally chewed on that. It certainly explained no one noticing any decline in Gamma’s sivrrut. (And was also a testament to just how powerful Incarnates truly were.)
“Okay,” I finally said. “I can understand why it would be difficult for you guys to notice that Gamma only had half a tank of gas. Of course, if she didn’t want to see him die, she could have just piggybacked on the analogy Rune just gave and made him live forever.”
“According to what Ursula got from him,” Endow stated, “that wouldn’t have been enough. He wanted power as well.”
Her words brought to mind the conversation I’d had with Static the first time he’d appeared to me as the killer.
“Life, in and of itself, isn’t enough,” I said, reflecting.
Rune nodded. “Correct. So he throws a hissy fit about wanting power and Mom decides to calm him down by giving him what he wants, only she can’t do it directly.”
Rune pointed at the table between our three chairs and out of nowhere Static’s amulet appeared on it, along with his crystal.
“She uses this,” Rune declared as he reached out and grabbed the amulet. “It’s a relic that can hold an Incarnate’s power, and Gamma puts half of hers into it, thereby giving Static access to her sivrrut.”
“Only it’s still not enough for him,” I added. “Static doesn’t just want access to power. He wants it as his own. Somehow he accomplishes it, but I have no idea how.”
Endow and Rune exchanged a glance, and then the former said, “He performed a…rite, of sorts. It bonded him to the relic containing Gamma’s sivrrut, making it part of him and vice versa.”
I frowned in distaste. “Is something like that normal?”
“It’s incredibly abnormal,” Rune responded. “And markedly dangerous, to be honest — and that’s just performing the rite. He could have died.”
“I suppose you’re wondering why anyone would do something like that,” Endow chimed in.
“Actually, I’m not,” I countered. “He did it for reasons already discussed: he wanted power. Oddly enough, Rune and I actually had a discussion recently about power and what people would do to obtain it, and the sivrrut of an Incarnate has to be the Holy Grail of power.”
“That’s actually not a bad analogy,” Rune noted. “Anyway, in Static’s case, even though the amulet gave him access to Gamma’s power, he was worried that if he angered Mommy, she could punish him by taking his favorite new toy.”
“And the rite was supposed to eliminate that threat,” I concluded.
“The problem, however, is that humans aren’t built to house those kinds of forces,” Endow stated. “Static was no exception.”
“It started eating him alive,” I concluded. “That’s why he looked the way he did, with the cadaverous face and skeletal body. The sivrrut in the amulet was devouring him.”
“Yes,” Endow agreed with a nod. “The way he presented himself when you first met the killer and when you fought him was his actual appearance. The semblance we typically saw was
