Still searching for their Master, Nakiri and Jerome find themselves in the woodlands along the border between Nestoria and Sendaria, retracing Ingressus' steps as best they can
But when they start to uncover evidence to suggest that someone is nearby, they fear the worst; and investigating for reason to believe they are being targeted by the Tidesinger, they find themselves uncovering much more than just what's around them
Author's note: so we do be touching on some more of what happened in "Unbroken" since it won't take a genius to work out where our Voltaris sleuths be in their search, but nothing in particular is explicitly referred to - and all of their assumptions are strategically inferred and nothing more
this is more than just a search for Ingressus, but a search *about* Ingressus - they are gonna have to come across this stuff sooner rather than later
also don't be confused by the chapter name. it isn't a rewrite or anything. I am merely using synonyms for "change" as my chapter titles and this one just seemed to fit in an ironic way
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In the time that it had taken them to explain to the remainder of the clan that they were not going to rest until they found and brought Ingressus back to them, and then walked the distance through the mountain pass and into Nestoris territory, Nakiri and Jerome had not uttered a single word to one another. Between them, they each had a thousand of their own questions, none with answers; only speculations and nothing more. They were too afraid to ask them for fear that their comforting speculations were wrong, and they would uncover something worse than they had feared.
They couldn't explain what had brought them into Nestoria short of the obvious answer that the Tidesinger was Achillean Nestoris. Although, if they were being honest with themselves, it was a folly decision, for everyone knew by now that the reason the Voltaris were no longer being attacked every waking hour was because efforts had turned on the once Ardoni legend for his outrage against members of the other clans – his own Aegus Nestoris included. They knew not for certain what he had done to Ingressus over his ten-year absence; only that they had inferred that his mental and physical scarring had come from him, and him only.
But that would surely mean that both legends would be foolish to step foot in Nestoria. Either way, neither Jerome nor Nakiri really knew what they were doing – only that they needed to find Ingressus before someone else found him.
They hadn't bothered with disguises after leaving Northwind, although that was quickly a regret when they saw that much of the pathway through the woods was laid bare, with little shrubbery to conceal their glow, should the time come. Neither had bothered with weapons either, for Jerome was exceptionally competent at hand-to-hand combat and could outwit a weapon with his bare hands, and Nakiri knew how to throw a punch when she needed to. Of course, in making this walk into uncharted territories, they had hoped – and only hoped – that they would not be of concern to anyone else between the two of them, empty-handed and unarmed.
When they'd made it into the densest part of the woods, they paused to look around, as if they were lost – which, ultimately, they were, and had been since they left the camp. They were looking for signs of their Voltaris Master. Any signs at all; but they were following a very dead trail – nothing but an idea to go along with their very sceptical concern for Ingressus' wellbeing. Several times, Jerome looked as though he had wanted to say something, but as he opened his mouth to speak, he could only lightly grunt as he tried to word his thoughts carefully, bailing after a few seconds of mental kerfuffle.
In the end, after an hour of looking lost and glancing behind every tree, Nakiri was the first to break the silence. She perked up from a bush a little out of the way of Jerome and quietly called him over.
"The grass has been weighted..." she said, pointing at the slightly flattened section of brittle grass, only slightly noticeably flatter than the surrounding layout.
Jerome squatted next to it and ran his hand over it, as if to determine its temperature. Cold. Whatever had flattened it was gone a matter of a couple of hours ago at most. If it weren't for the harsh morning winter sun, the grass would have resumed its normal shape by the time the two Voltaris had arrived. In being brittle and fragile, the pattern left whatever was on top of it had lasted longer and thus, retained a little of the damage.
"Whatever it was, it was a reasonable size..."
"But why here?" Nakiri asked, looking around again.
"It's a dense part of the woods. I'd imagine in the summer, very little light slips through here for the trees' leaves building a thick canopy."
"It's the middle of Winter, Jerome... There's no such thing as leaves right now..." But as Nakiri chastised the older Voltaris, Jerome looked at her a certain way, and she paused to think again. "Whoever came here, knew that this would usually be a good hiding spot..." she finally said.
Jerome nodded. Then he caught Nakiri's gaze again and they both stood in realisation.
"I think the Tidesinger was here..." he finally said under his breath. "And he hasn't been gone that long, so he won't have gone that far..."
Nakiri drew herself in.
"I did not come out all this way to find the Tidesinger, Jerome. I'm here for Ingressus."
"Relax. I'll take care of him if the time comes, don't you worry about that." Jerome almost spoke with spite as he uttered the Tidesinger's name, thinking about the possibility that they could run into him.
After learning all that he had about Achillean and what he had spent ten years secretly doing – however little of that knowledge could only be inferred – he suddenly felt a tingle of hatred in his bones, tugging at the righteous part of him. Everyone knew he never carried an aggressive Song on him, and everyone knew he may look as though he could kill someone – he never raised a hand in attack; only in defence – but just thinking about the Tidesinger, thinking about the righteous gold of his markings and the swift enchantment of his staff... It made him want to back down from his morals, to ignore the good in him and make the Tidesinger pay for breaking their Master, reducing him to skin and bones and torment. He knew the other clans wanted just the same, but he wanted it most.
He would have assumed that Ingressus also would have wanted some form of revenge; but he and Nakiri had worked out his past connection to Achillean, and so it was highly unlikely that was why he was searching for him, as disappointing as it was.
Jerome would have loved to have seen Ingressus fight with the tenure that he once had as the Deathsinger. Now he knew that chance dwindled infinitely all the while he fought only for sanity.
As he glanced up from the grass, still squatting with his digits intertwined with the brittle blades, he spotted a line of dull orange, glowing from the faintest of cracks in the distance. Even in the sun splitting through the trees, he could see that it was no reflection, nor was it merely a glint of ray atop some metal. This was a synthetic glow – one that didn't emanate from the surface on which he saw it. Slowly, he lifted his fingers and pointed in the direction of his discovery.
"What do you think that is?" he asked, suspicious.
It took Nakiri a while for her eyes to adjust to the light in the distance, but as she squinted, she caught sight of what Jerome had spotted.
"I don't know..." was all she could muster in a small voice.
Even though they were out purely to search for their missing Voltaris Master, Jerome could feel himself tense at the potential that they may run into the Tidesinger before they ran into Ingressus; and given that they also knew Achillean was on the run, some abandoned shaft in the woods would be a perfect place for him to hide – especially if it wasn't known to the Nestoris of its presence. But on top of that, Jerome could feel his heartbeat quicken in preparation for the Tidesinger; but not solely because he may run into him. He was more worried that their worst fears had come to pass and upon finding the Tidesinger, they would find Ingressus, too – and it wouldn't be the preferred defeat as they would wish for.
As they approached the trap door from which the subtle orange glow emanated through the cracks, the pair prepared themselves for the worst, although they had not a clue what to expect upon reaching the ground below. They took each step slowly, not knowing if they were going to find themselves worse off for it in the long run.
The draughts immediately hit them, slapping their faces as the wind rushed through the abandoned tunnels, sweeping their hair back and blowing the Redstone torches towards them. An eerie sense overcame them as they could hear the faint whisperings of winds through every crack in the walls, and the light echoes of stones and rocks crumbling in the distance. Nakiri kicked a loose pebble on the ground and heard it bounce along the main corridor, hoping to catch the sound of panic from someone else down there with them – be it the Tidesinger or Ingressus... or both.
She couldn't stop her legs from shaking as she stepped an inch closer to Jerome, nervous to be down somewhere with so much abandoned history, unknowing whether someone else was present or what had occurred down here once upon a time. She didn't need to think too hard about the little things that made up the mine network they stood in – only one simple conclusion that sent her mind reeling a thousand miles a minute, jumping over hurdles to the worst-case scenario.
A vision intruded her mind as she imagined turning one of the corners to see the Tidesinger's hands wrapped around Ingressus' neck, or to see him struggling to pull free from his villainous grasp.
Or worse... Not a hint of vermillion across his markings, overshadowed by an evil golden glow, stood in a pool of stolen life.
She couldn't understand why her mind fell so detrimentally. They knew now that Achillean Nestoris was once seen by Ingressus as a brother, and Ingressus still wanted that element of his enemy to come back, thus surely, there must still be a hint of goodness in that whom he searched for – that the Tidesinger they may stumble on need not be the bad guy that broke Ingressus in the first place.
But she couldn't take that chance.
Jerome grabbed a Redstone torch from its notch in the wall and lit the way forward as they traversed the corridor, careful with each step, slow and steady so as not to startle anything that lurked. The floor was cold beneath their feet, yet the periodic heated draughts that brushed past them only kicked up dust around their ankles; until they got closer to the end and the walls once again gave way to the metal bars of a cell, and the light clink clink clink of rattling shackles in the back caught their attention, accompanied by a low, angry hum of a choral tune. But the Song was not the first thing they noticed.
The door was wide open – as it had been for seven years, despite that knowledge not being of blessing to the pair – but they lingered outside it and simply looked in, jaws half-dropped and nerves rising.
The cell had not changed in all the years it had been vacant of a prisoner, and even to the two Voltaris who knew next to nothing of what Ingressus had endured in his ten years of absence, the faint whispers of torment lingered on the walls, along with the light drip drip of the dewy ceiling dropping into the corner. For all the silence of an empty network, a thousand screams resounded off the stone, and for all the dust on the floor in front of them, a mess formed in the faint shapes of long past bloodstains and fluids that never quite cleaned up from the stone beneath their feet, and blotches of old, dried blood dotted across the back wall, few and faint.
Nakiri's breath grew shaky as she clung to the rusty bars in front of her – not unlike the way that Aegus had done when he first discovered Ingressus after years of deceit – and she stuttered for a moment, trying to find the words that swirled her mind.
"Jerome..." she whispered.
"I know..." he replied, knowing exactly what she was thinking.
She said it anyway.
"He did this to him..."
"I know..."
"...for ten years..."
The details of Ingressus' ordeal for ten years still eluded them, but before now, they had only his scars and his absentminded utterances to go on as clues as to where he had been for so long, and what had happened to him in that time. In seeing with their own eyes something that potentially explained so much more than who had targeted him and how, they could learn nothing good from that which laid dormant, but rife, before them.
The shackles dangling on the wall explained Ingressus' apprehension in contact around his wrists. The dark, small space that they stared into explained why he was anxious about being in a tent at night, and why he chose to be outside among the Voltaris all the time – even if he was slightly apart from them, wary of overwhelming himself.
It had taken their Master a couple of weeks to settle back among what remained of his clan before the symptoms started to show; but Nakiri knew all about overworking the mind to stay focussed. He hadn't begun to decline until he had nothing more to do about his day than watch his clan, wary of the others coming for him – and that was when his mind started to tick over one too many times. Since escaping from the mine network (although neither Nakiri nor Jerome knew how he had done it), Ingressus had not five minutes to himself to allow him to think of anything other than bringing Achillean home and saving him from the Aggressium Prime Song. Every move he made; every thought that crossed his mind was geared towards rectifying what he felt he should never have caused in the first place.
That was why he didn't start to crumble until after he had returned to Northwind and suddenly every word, every action, every memory became nothing more, and laid untouched and dormant inside his brittle mind until it broke one too many pieces and, instead of being trapped in a cell underground, he was trapped inside his mind still refusing to relent.
And with that, Nakiri gasped.
"Jerome..." she said, poking the older Voltaris' side anxiously. "How long did it take us to get here?"
Jerome thought for a moment, his grip on the torch tightening fiercely as his mind also began to connect the dots.
"Just shy of 12 hours; but we took our time looking for evidence of his movements... Why?"
"How long was Ky'Ingressus gone when he used to disappear on his walks once a month?"
Another pause as he thought, only this time when he responded, Jerome's voice grew small.
"A... similar amount of time..."
Nakiri knew that Ingressus found himself to be more often trapped inside his own head than not. On clear days for him, he would be as normal as he had once been, and he would spar with the other warriors of the clan to refine his skills, as much as they had elapsed over time – and expectedly so – but on believing him to have physically escaped his predicaments, she never quite believed him to have mentally escaped.
And now their trip to what was a profound discovery had cemented one possible idea...
"He used to come here, didn't he...? Every month... He used to revisit this exact place..."
Suddenly, Jerome's posture dopped and he hung his head, almost disappointed in his Master. They had believed that he had been going on his monthly walks to clear his mind as they made him so much more mentally stable, and his night terrors were far from as frequent as they had been over recent years since he stopped them, yet what they had just concluded was far from okay. They would even agree that this was...
Unhealthy...
It didn't make sense that Ingressus would seem emotionally more stable upon revisiting what appeared to be ten years of torture, despite them knowing well that torment can both make and break a person – and be a part of them that will never leave – but that was because they were still missing a vital piece of information...
They may know that Ingressus was out looking for Achillean; but they didn't know it was because he knew he had gone missing. They didn't know that Ingressus had been tending to the Nestoris in this mine network at the end of his 'walks' every month. They didn't know that the Nestoris they had been worried about was no longer a threat.
Nakiri and Jerome may have uncovered vital information that explained much more than Ingressus would ever tell them, but they had still barely scratched the surface of what really went on. The pair were stunned into silence, with only the eerie accompaniment of the Aggressium Song by the door as it had always been, its glow still dull from disuse.
"That's not Ky'Ingressus' Song... Is it?" Nakiri asked.
Jerome bent down to retrieve it and listened carefully to its angry hum for but a moment; his face a picture of anxiousness, knowing that if it was, they were in more trouble than they thought.
As would be Ingressus.
Eventually, he relaxed.
"No," he said with confidence. "This isn't his. I don't know who it belongs to – if anyone..."
"I'm done here, Jerome. I want not another second to learn more. Bring the Song, just in case."
"In case of what?"
"I don't know... I just have a feeling that if we have it, we're helping somehow."
"Nakiri, whoever this belongs to, they left it here for a reason-"
"And now we're making sure they can't have it back, whoever they are; whatever the reason."
Jerome sighed and pocketed the Song as he replaced the torch on the wall and leered over his shoulder at the remainder of the network as Nakiri made haste up the ladder and back to the surface, her own mind crumbling at what they had just found mere miles away from their camp. To think that Ingressus was at arm's reach that whole time...
They found a lot in the short time surrounded by tormented history rich within the mine network; but they were still no closer to finding Ingressus.
Author's note: so, I know that this fic has had some disruption in its updates, and I know I said I was gonna limit that as best I can, but I have come across a much larger issue. real briefly: I have encountered some 'controversy' (in lieu of a better word) regarding "Unbroken" that has resulted in a lot of rather unnecessary threats in my DMs on Wattpad (for those reading on Ao3), and I've simply lost the motivation to write more of "Amends" as I sit in a dilemma as to what to do. I have almost exhausted my surplus of pre-written chapters and have but one more left for next week (22/04). I am also about to enter my final exam season of this academic year and am as yet unsure of what time I will have
I am committed to finishing this fic - for my sake, above anyone else's - but right now, I've nothing more to give; so I apologise for the inconvenience *yet again*
so as of next week, I am gonna have to put this one on a hiatus until I can find the motivation to write the rest of it. it shouldn't be any more than like five or six more chapters after this one, but all the while I am receiving these DMs, it's leaving me in my dilemma. I'll fix it, one way or another XD