“I suppose you’ll be wanting this back,” I said, holding it out to him.
“The badge?” he asked.
“The Kroten Yoso Va,” I corrected. He didn’t move to take it, so I simply rested it on my thigh.
Rune merely stared at me for a moment. “When did you figure it out?”
“Right before Static tried to take it,” I answered. “He mentioned something about the items he was taking from me being in good hands. It triggered some things in my memory that you had said — like how Ursula was in good hands with me. How you and the other Incarnates were in good hands with me. You seemed to be equating me with ‘good hands.’ And that’s where you also said the Kroten Yoso Va was: in good hands.”
“That’s really impressive,” he said solemnly.
“Well, you dropped enough hints. I just didn’t catch on until Static was about to get it, and suddenly it all became clear.”
“No, what’s really impressive is that I wasn’t trying to drop any hints, but you figured it out anyway.”
I blinked in surprise. “So it was just sheer luck that I happened to realize what that badge really was?”
“Even if you hadn’t realized what it was, I’m not sure that the outcome would have been different.”
“Other than me goading Static into taking it,” I said. “Once he did that, it stripped him of his powers. Or rather, stripped him of Gamma’s power.”
“And in a way that didn’t kill him,” Rune noted. “Regardless, after his powers were gone, the doubles he’d manufactured vanished, along with anything else he’d created — including the compulsion in your mind.”
“That’s nice to know,” I blurted out in relief as a new question popped up in my brain. “Hmmm. Why do you think he never made a double of me?”
“Ursula might be able to confirm it with what she got from his brain,” Rune began, “but I’m guessing Static was worried about overtaxing the crystal.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’d already used it to make doubles of three Incarnates,” Rune explained. “That was seemingly more than he’d ever done at one time.”
“Yeah,” I agreed with a nod. “Before that, he was picking you guys off one at a time.”
“Right,” Rune conceded. “He only made three doubles out of desperation — at the point when he’d been unmasked as the killer. If he’d known the crystal could manage that earlier, there would probably be more of us dead. That said, I think he was still concerned about overworking it — not to mention the fact that, on the surface, you shouldn’t have presented much of a challenge.”
“In other words, he thought he could handle me without using up a bunch of sivrrut.”
“You said it yourself earlier,” Rune stated with a laugh. “Our arrogance would be our undoing. Guess you were right.”
“Normally I’d be overjoyed about taking you pompous showboats down a notch,” I deadpanned, causing Rune to chuckle. “At the moment, though, I’m trying to figure out if I’m angry with you or not.”
His eyebrows went up in surprise. “About what?”
“About sticking me with the Kroten Yoso Va without telling me. About making me its Keeper without saying a word about it. In fact, you told me that you didn’t even bring it here.”
“Of course I brought it here!” he shot back. “Do I look stupid? We had an Incarnate killer on our hands. Why would I leave behind the one thing that could definitely stop him?”
“So all that talk about not wanting to use it on your friends was just that — talk?”
“No, all that was true. The only area where I fibbed a little was in saying that I hadn’t brought it to Permovren.”
“Well, it would have been nice if you had told me the truth. Letting me walk around with it was like putting a target on my back.”
“It only made you a target if people knew you had it, and no one did,” Rune stated. “Do you remember when you first encountered the Kroten Yoso Va and touched it?”
“How could I forget? It barbecued my hands — punishment for grabbing it.”
Rune shook his head. “It wasn’t punishing you. It was forging you.”
I looked at him in confusion. “Forging me into what?”
“Keeper, of course,” Rune said matter-of-factly.
“Wait a minute,” I muttered, frowning. “Are you saying you selected me as Keeper back when I first touched the Kroten Yoso Va?”
Rune stared at me for a moment, then sighed. “I really haven’t done a great job of explaining this to you.”
“To be honest,” I countered, “you haven’t done any kind of job of explaining anything. In fact, if this were an actual job, you would have bombed the interview.”
“Well, let me provide some clarity,” he offered. “Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, Incarnates select the person to be Keeper — usually an individual with an advanced degree of mystical or magical knowledge.”
“And that hundredth time?” I asked.
“On that occasion, the Kroten Yoso Va makes the selection.”
“Hold on,” I said, blinking in bewilderment. “Are you trying to say that artifact somehow picked me to be Keeper?”
“I think it did more than that,” Rune stated.
“Like what?”
Rune appeared to reflect for a few seconds, then said, “As you can imagine, there are times when the Kroten Yoso Va is without a Keeper. For instance, if the Keeper dies and no successor is found. There are also occasions when it’s simply been lost or misplaced. During those times, when it’s essentially homeless, the artifact can often be used by anyone who is well-versed in the mystic arts. But when you first came across it, the Kroten Yoso Va was in the hands of Diabolist Mage, who was — at best — a second-rate magician.”
“Yeah, but the Kroten Yoso Va helped him elevate his game,” I added, recalling how the artifact had allowed the Diabolist
