"You've really got to go to bed, Alumna. It's well past Brightening."
Valens offered Aix a groggy nod as the two of them, walking side-by-side, followed Ausus through the tunnels back to the pod. "I will if you will," he said, his voice feeling thick.
Eternal Radiance, it had been a long night, but for the first time in a while, he felt he could at last truly rest. The world was still not safe, but he could catch his breath now.
The Blended had a plan. It had taken almost four hours of poking holes in their ideas to make it into a good plan, but he thought it would work. The relief left him almost dizzy. Or maybe that was the fatigue.
He yawned. Yes, he needed to sleep, especially since there was nothing that could be done this very moment to push the plan forward.
Aix rubbed his forehead with a wince. "I need to rest, too."
Ausus smiled sympathetically as they stepped within the man's spacious pod. "Is the headache coming on?" He patted the lifeholder's shoulder as the newly-Blended man only glanced at him with a pained squint. "Thought so. The best thing for it is to sleep, trust me. When you wake, you'll probably start hearing the clivia. The Eyes will be harder to pick up, though."
"Because of the Trellis?" Aix asked, picking his way around Domi and Daedalus with care. The twins slumbered not far from Buccina on the floor, which had depressed slightly beneath their weight, cradling their bodies in a way that looked comfortable enough.
Ausus nodded, studying the twins as the pair shivered a little. He stared at the floor, and a thin gauze-like substance bubbled up and then crawled across the boys, then Buccina. "You should get some rest. You too, Aix."
Valens shuddered, but at least the grayish-brown gauze didn't appear to confine them in any way. Though it was the ugliest blanket he'd ever seen.
He glanced at Ausus. "Do you Blended need to sleep? Or is that just those who are changing?"
Ausus rolled his eyes. "We're human, Valens. Yes, we sleep. Even the clivia sleep." The forgeholder nodded pointedly at the pair of pups, smiling in pleasure.
Valens followed his gaze and snorted. Instead of lying curled in the radish bowl where they had been left earlier, one now slept tangled in Domi's hair and the other lay half-buried within the collar of Daedalus's paenula.
The Blended man chuckled and crouched over his older son, reaching down to gently pull the pup free from Daedalus's clothes, extracting filaments one by one with care. "I should put them someplace safer," he said. "They're much harder to hurt than they look, but still." He gently pried the clivia free of his son's clothing, then froze, frowning.
Valens frowned back, stepping toward the man. "What?"
Ausus pressed a palm to the boy's cheek, then Daedalus's forehead. "He's very warm," he said, brows knitting. "At least, I think so. I'm colder now than I used to be, so it's hard to tell." He straightened, cradling the clivia in his palms. "And he's not waking," he added with a worried glance down at the limp pup.
"Let me see," Valens said, crouching next to the older twin. A palm to the boy's forehead confirmed what Ausus suspected. "Yes, he's very warm." He withdrew his hand, sighing. With all the stress the twins had been under, it didn't surprise him that one had fallen ill the instant they reached anything close to safety.
Aix, kneeling next to Domi, cleared his throat. "He's running a fever as well," he said, pressing a hand to Domi's forehead and smiling as the boy curled toward the no-doubt cool touch. Promenia hummed, wafting toward Buccina in a mirage-like cloud, far thinner than normal, and the old man frowned at the woman for a moment before nodding. "She's fine." He smiled apologetically as the Princeps Mindholder opened her green eyes and blinked at him. "Forgive me, Basilicus. I just wanted to check your health."
"My health?" she asked, yawning and straightening against the webbed wall. She brushed messy strawberry blond hair over her shoulder, and it swiftly curled into perfect, gentle waves. "I am well, thank you." She frowned. "Why?"
Aix dipped his chin to indicate the younger twin. "The boys are sick. Something seems to be going around." His promenia flowed into Domi, and then his brows arched. "Ah."
"What?" Valens snapped, heart vaulting into his throat. "What's wrong?"
The lifeholder grimaced and glanced at Ausus. "Do the pups accidentally cut you in their sleep at times?" he asked uneasily. "Such as if startled by a sudden movement?"
Ausus blinked, then shook his head. "No, why?" He paused, and his mouth fell open as he gaped at the lifeholder, then his sons. "Wait, are they--"
A chill swept through Valens as he caught on, followed by a flash of hot anger. "Do you mean to tell me this is clivia poisoning?" he growled, glaring at Ausus. "Did you plan this? I told you not to do this without my permission!" He jerked his head toward Aix. "Until we had seen it was safe."
Ausus's head swung side-to-side more firmly. "I didn't tell the pups to do this, I promise. It was too soon anyway." He bit his lip, eyes lowering to the unmoving pup in his hands. "Releasing their spores weakens them. They already needed a day or so to recover after Aix, and now they've dosed three people."
Aix's intense gaze shifted from Domi to Daedalus, promenia following, and then he relaxed. Particles wafted up into the air from both boys and dissipated. "I don't know enough about clivia anatomy to say much about the pups, but these two will be fine, at least." He frowned. "Though they didn't lower the sensitivity of their prometus. Their immune response is going to overcome the infection."
Ausus sighed, rubbing his forehead. "The spores won't take root, then. They won't be able to Blend."
Aix's eyes found Valens's own. "I can't purge the infection. It will just have to run its course, unless Logos treats them." He hesitated. "Or I can encourage them to lower the sensitivity of their prometus."
"Let them Blend?" Valens snapped, shaking his head. "You can't be serious."
Aix offered a wry smile. "It seems they wanted to do this and weren't going to take 'no' for an answer, Alumna."
"They're kids." He couldn't believe he was having to explain this. "They're barely fifteen! They don't get to just decide to turn themselves into Blended."
Aix patted his shoulder. "Alumna, with a decision this big, which affects their lives in so profound a way, they're really the only ones with the right to decide."
Valens gritted his teeth. "Maybe, but they should have waited. Talked it through with us first."
Buccina cleared her throat. "Yes, they should have, but at least they made this choice of their own free will." Her promenia rose out of the twins like steam. "The question now is, are you going to honor their wishes?"
<>
"...licus?"
Daedalus groaned as his body shifted to and fro, setting every muscle afire.
"That's it. Wake now, Basilicus."
The annoying hand would not stop jostling him. He would have swatted it away if he had the strength. Weakness gripped him as surely as it had after... after...
No.
His mind shied away from the horrible memory of Oliva towering over him, and his eyes cracked open.
Through a watery haze, a blue face slowly swam into view. Daedalus jerked back, alarm sending a weak spurt of strength through him, but it faded rapidly. He sagged, trembling in fear until the face resolved into one he knew and yet did not know.
"Aix?" he whispered. Sweat dripped into his eyes, making them sting even more than the amber light already did. But the old man's keen eyes still pierced the haze, steel gray no longer but now steel blue, with a metallic glint within the black pupil. "You are all blue." His voice sounded as airy as his head felt.
Aix smiled down at him. Blue lips parted to reveal perfectly normal white teeth, at least. "Yes, I am. Do you remember why I look this way?"
It took a long moment for the memory to form from drifting, confused thoughts. "You Blended," he muttered as he recalled sitting at Aix's side while the old man shivered through the early stages of the transformation.
"Yes," the lifeholder said, and he was indeed still a lifeholder; his green laurel glimmered brightly from within his tunica and paenula. "And it seems you tried to do likewise."
That was right. He remembered talking to the pups, feeling like a fool for asking a pair of what looked like flying blue noodles to help him. But one pup had answered his request and sliced him behind the ear, while Domi held his own hair back for the other pup to do the same. Everything after that was a blur of heat, vague sounds, and disjointed dreams.
"If... deprive the people of the Trellis," he said thickly, sticky eyelids drifting closed, "then... must show them..."
"Show them?" Aix's voice drifted down to him through half-formed dreams. He shook Daedalus again. "Open your eyes for me."
Groaning, Daedalus did as he was told. "Show them there is a way to live without it," he said wearily. He frowned up at Aix. "May I sleep now?"
The old man smiled apologetically. "You may, but if you do so without lowering the sensitivity of your prometus, you won't Blend. Your body will fight off the infection."
Daedalus sighed. "Nothing is ever easy." He let his head flop to the side, wincing as the movement ignited stabbing pain in the wound behind his ear, and squinted at his slumbering twin. Did he look as pale and sweaty as Domi appeared? "Have to do it for both of us, I suppose," he muttered. His brother knew how to adjust his own body temperature, but Daedalus doubted Domi knew how to calm his own immune system yet.
Aix chuckled, offering his hand a soothing pat. His touch was deliciously cool. "I'm afraid so, or you two won't be identical any longer if only one of you Blends. Luckily, I'm sure the resonance will do half the work for you."
Daedalus nodded. Shivering as fever sent another wave of misery through him, he closed his eyes and focused on his breathing, then reached for his prometus.
His awareness tunneled through inky black and violet shadows to the silvery hum and radiant darkness shimmering within him. Glossy obsidian and amethyst tendrils, almost liquid-like, flowed up to meet him with a faint, wordless query.
He visualised relaxation and stillness and held his intention steady as the liquid light and shadow caressed it. And then the tendrils fell away, settling into a calm pool of rippling black and purple ink.
He withdrew his awareness and blinked up at Aix.
The old man smiled as Daedalus's lids began to droop whether he wished them to do so or not. "Well done. Go ahead and sleep now," Aix said. "When you wake, you'll be Blended."
Daedalus slept.