There was silence for a moment as the two Incarnates appeared to chew on my explanation.
“I don’t know,” Rune droned. “It sounds good, but it’s a lot to base on two random clues.”
“But they weren’t random clues,” I insisted. “When Cerek showed up that second time, I actually blurted out a couple of queries. Specifically, I asked him where he was, and I asked what happened to Gamma. The clues he gave were actually answers to my questions. With the hint about Moses, he told me his location: he was with the killer, as evidenced by the fact that he and Reverb came out of Static’s amulet when I was fighting him.”
“And with the Cleopatra clue, he was telling you what happened to Gamma,” Endow remarked.
“Exactly,” I intoned. “If there’s one thing that everybody knows about Cleopatra, it’s that she committed suicide. Somewhat less well known is the fact that, at one point, she made her son co-ruler of Egypt.”
“She shared her power,” Endow concluded. “So with that clue, Cerek told you everything you needed to know about what happened to Gamma.”
“Almost,” I countered. “I still don’t know exactly how she died.”
“Yes, you do,” Rune countered. “We all do. We saw it when we confronted Static.” He reached out and picked up the crystal relic from the table. “This is how she did it.”
I glanced at the crystal that Static had used to create doubles of Rune, Endow, and Mariner, reflecting on what had happened then.
“So, you’re saying she created a double of herself,” I hypothesized, “and then had it take her life?”
“I’m not just saying it,” Rune announced. “That’s what happened — at least according to the information we got from Ursula and Reverb.”
Who, in turn, got it from Static and Cerek, I thought. It ultimately meant that the info provided amounted to a lot of hearsay, but that didn’t make it wrong. Moreover, I really didn’t question the fact that Gamma took her own life; it was just the manner in which it happened.
“That said,” Rune continued, “Reverb and Ursula got a lot of insight from their sources as to what led up to it.”
“Basically,” Endow added, “Gamma was both livid and frightened when she found out about the rite Static had performed. But, as you already know, she couldn’t take her sivrrut back without killing him.”
“Which was ironic because leaving him with her power was actually destroying him,” I noted. “So she decided to kill herself, as I deduced before. Once she was dead, her power would dissipate — including what was in the relic Static had bonded with — and he’d go back to being a normal person. There might be some embarrassment over what had happened, but Gamma wouldn’t be around to deal with it, and her son would survive.”
“Close, but no cigar,” Rune intoned. “In truth, Gamma actually thought that, given time, she could convince Static to reverse the rite, as it was the only way she thought he could survive. But later she found out that Static had his own plans for survival, and they were a bit more radical than anything she ever would have contemplated.”
“Basically, he planned to commit a murder here in Permovren,” Endow said. “He would leave enough clues to implicate an Incarnate in the crime, and then wait for the one item to be brought here that could punish an Incarnate for such a crime.”
“The Kroten Yoso Va,” I guessed.
“Yes,” Endow confirmed with a nod. “Static wanted to use it to siphon power from other Incarnates, which he could then use to cure himself, as well as wield as his own.”
“But why go through all that instead of just reversing the rite?” I asked. “Seems like the end result and getting the Kroten Yoso Va are the same.”
“Except the power from the Kroten Yoso Va would be much greater and wouldn’t devour him,” Endow stated. “Plus, if he successfully reversed the rite, Gamma was sure to take the amulet — and her power — back for good. He couldn’t risk that.”
“And on her part, Gamma saw death as a way to resolve a lot of problems,” Rune noted. “First and foremost, her son would live; that’s what was most important to her. In addition, he wouldn’t be a murderer. And lastly, no one would die because of the things she’d done.”
“So what went wrong?” I asked.
Rune sighed. “Everything.”
I gave him a confused look. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“Using the crystal, Gamma creates the double of herself and orders it to attack,” he said. “All goes according to plan up until the point when she’s about to die.”
“Hold on,” I said. “I recall when you guys reverse engineered her death, she didn’t just go gently into that good night. She was fighting back.”
“There’s something about conflict that spurs the double to fight even more vigorously — energizes them,” Endow remarked. “Something we learned firsthand. In Gamma’s case, she wanted the fight to end quickly, so she fought back to a certain extent.”
“And as I was saying,” Rune chimed in, “it’s at the point where she’s about to die that she realizes something’s wrong: her power’s not dissipating — neither the portion that still resides with her nor the sivrrut in Static’s relic.”
I looked at him in surprise. “But that’s what you told me happens when an Incarnate dies. Their power disappears.”
“But it didn’t,” Rune stated. “Instead, all of Gamma’s remaining power seemed to consolidate in Static’s amulet. That’s why she was shouting ‘No’ when we reverse engineered things.”
“She was also shouting for Cerek,” I noted, and then my eyes widened as realization hit. “Wait — he was with her. He was there when she died.”
“That’s right,” Rune agreed. “And with the last of her power, she hid him in Static’s relic.”
“Which is why none of us were able to locate him,” Endow
