Sorcerers and Sorceresses took it for granted that they’d have access to regalia. Without the powerful tools, their abilities would be limited. It was one of the reasons the Vault of Dreams was one of the best-defended places on Last Remnant with its maze-like layout, spell requirements to transit, guards, and active and passive sorcerous defenses.
Lyssa could have tried to break in with all the showstoppers in the world, but she wouldn’t have made it this far. She had not accepted that truth before, but now that she’d passed through the Vault again, she understood the implications.
That cold reality constrained the possibilities. Corruption among vault tenders wasn’t impossible, but they were constantly checking each other’s work, which reduced the possibility. It was an almost sacred duty.
Her stomach tightened and she sighed. There was a regalia in front of her now, so a lot of her paranoid conspiracy theories burned up in the fires of truth and hard evidence.
“Are you okay, Lyssa?” Takeo asked.
“I’m fine,” Lyssa said. “It’s a lot to take in, but this isn’t over yet.”
Although the Society and the vault tenders had lost much of the ancient knowledge of Lemuria, they weren’t ignorant. There was one important truth they’d figured out. The cycling witnessed in the Vault of Dreams wasn’t random. The versions that appeared included both known versions of the past and potential new forms.
Lyssa didn’t care about the other implications. She was focused on the one relevant fact that related to the investigation of her brother’s alleged death. More recent regalia forms appeared more often in the cycle. As the most recent bearer of the Northern Trickster, if the regalia in the alcove was truly her brother’s, she’d see his form if she waited long enough.
There was one small problem. Appearing recently didn’t guarantee an appearance in a given timeframe.
She cleared her throat. “This might take a while.”
“Of course.” Takeo nodded.
“You don’t have to stay here with me.” Lyssa shrugged. “You know better than I that this might take a long time.”
Takeo looked stubborn. “The Vault of Dreams can be a place of great joy or crushing sadness. This isn’t a time you should be alone, Lyssa. I will wait. If you wish to talk, I will talk. If you wish me to be silent, I’ll do that. That is part of the duty of the vault tenders.”
“I’m just going to watch and wait.” Lyssa sighed. “However long it takes. You’re never too old to practice patience, right?”
“Do you wish me to remain silent during this time?” Jofi asked.
“Yes,” she whispered. “This is a family matter for now.”
“As you wish, Lyssa.”
Standing and staring at an ever-changing outfit provided a Zenlike experience, but this wasn’t meditation. This was the opposite. She wasn’t setting her mind free. She wasn’t concentrating with all her will and effort.
Takeo stood behind her, his arms behind his back. He waited in silence, having dismissed his duplicate. His presence was more comforting than she’d anticipated.
The regalia continued to change from one form to another. Lyssa knelt after thirty minutes and sat down twenty minutes after that. As if mocking her, the regalia repeated one of the earlier forms without showing her brother’s.
Lyssa wrapped her arms around her legs, waiting and worrying that she might have blinked at the wrong time or coughed, somehow missing her brother’s regalia. The changes weren’t quick enough that that should have been a problem, but she wanted to be sure.
Or did she? Seeing the last form of the Northern Trickster would point to Chris being dead.
It didn’t matter at this point. She needed to know one way or another. That was the only way she could move on with her life and face the conspiracy now targeting her.
Tristan’s tenuous links between her brother and the present incident supported a small hope that the same people would be involved. That would make revenge easy, but she also knew coincidences happened more often than people thought due to the tight-knit nature of the sorcery community.
Lyssa didn’t know how long she’d wait before deciding the true Northern Trickster hadn’t returned. It was a long shot. The presence of the unbound changing regalia in this alcove was strong proof it had returned.
Despite her rants and accusations, the setup of the Vault of Dreams undercut most of her theories. The individual vault tenders couldn’t remove regalia. They couldn’t even touch them. Regalia only left their alcoves when they were bound to an Illuminated.
The Vault of Dreams had been salvaged during the fall of Lemuria and remained a product of sorcery no longer available to the modern Society. Although no one liked to remember, it was only a portion of the original structure.
Sorcerers had advanced since then, but they’d never been able to recover all their lost knowledge and power. That eternal longing for an inaccessible past explained a lot about the pathologies of the Illuminated Society.
“Do you ever do this out of curiosity?” she asked in a quiet voice, nodding at the regalia. “Just watch one to see what it’s been and what it might be?”
“I have, yes,” Takeo replied. “It’s hard to know for certain if we’re seeing forms from times of spotty records or the future, though I, like most, believe we’re also seeing the potential of the regalia.”
“Kind of weird when you think about it.” Lyssa narrowed her eyes. “It’s almost kind of like it’s seeing into the future.”
“In a way, yes.”
Lyssa shot up as the regalia shifted to a familiar form. Thigh-high boots, a yellow and blue tunic, long blue gloves, and a carved wooden mask. She only needed a split second to recognize her brother’s version of the Northern Trickster.
“What do you think?” Takeo asked.
The small seconds stretched into an eternity as she stared at the regalia, her stomach twisting and bile rising in the back of her throat. With no fanfare or respect for her feelings, the regalia shifted into a different form.
“It’s his,” she whispered. “It’s Chris’s version.”
“I agree,” Takeo
