BOOK 12: CHAPTER 2: SUNK COST

2 – Sunk Cost

Victor stood before his mantle framework and scowled. He’d been there, in his spirit space, for more than an hour, and he’d accomplished nothing. As often happened of late, he was ready to throw his hands up and return to his many other obligations—writing in his Farscribe books, listening to reports from his commanders and governors, and the like. It was easy to put off this impossible task when he had so many other tasks to occupy his mind—so many people waiting for his attention.

Still, he forced himself to continue staring, ever hopeful that something would click, that some new idea would come to him. His framework was a masterpiece of complexity. He’d woven more than a thousand patterns into it—memories of war, love, inspiration, and fear. He had complex braids of fear being overcome by rage and duty, of hope mixing with loss to create a sense of melancholy, and even fear being used to drive him forward, pushing through despair and finding hope.

It was a complicated, wonderful, and terrifyingly convoluted piece of work that he'd spent months' worth of hours toiling over—and he hated it. For the hundredth time, he contemplated ripping it all down, dragging his threads back to the skein and starting anew. Clearly, he was doing something wrong, and the damn thing had gotten so complex that the tweaks and adjustments he tried to make seemed to have no effect. In the early days, when he’d had just a few woven threads, any minor change resounded through the pattern. Now? There were too many redundant patterns.

How could changing one darkly-tinted weave of fear and rage change his mantle when he had ten such? A hundred? His gut knew he’d gone down the wrong road, adding memory after memory, experience after experience, hoping to gain further feats and thereby increase the rarity of his mantle. That wasn’t how it worked, obviously; it wasn’t a matter of complexity or quantity, but rather one of quality. Still, the thought of unraveling all that work…

Thinking of feats brought his mind around to the first time he’d managed to push his mantle into the epic stage. He’d managed to build a mantle called “The Night Crowned Flame” and, with it, been awarded the feat, Dread Presence. He laughed at his old naivety; it had seemed so easy. Even so, no matter how he expanded his mantle, no matter how many times the title of his mantle changed, he hadn’t earned another feat. It made him wonder if the feat being awarded had been a separate event, unconnected to the mantle taking shape.

When he’d gained the Dread Presence feat, he’d been introspective; he’d rehashed his memories of using fear on the battlefield. Had he simply gained that feat because he’d internalized something that had always been there? Was it unrelated to his mantle? He wished he knew the answer.

He supposed one way to find out would be to unravel the monument to his efforts. If he pulled his mantle apart thread by thread, would the feat disappear? What if he was wrong, though? What if he was on the threshold of breaking through? It would take him years to rebuild this complicated tapestry…

Thinking of the feat—a topic and question that had rattled around in his brain for years—made him think of the little System clues he’d received from time to time as he’d gained levels from slaying the undead veil walkers on Dark Ember. He picked up one of his notebooks and reviewed the many messages he’d copied down:

Your use of breath attacks while under the mantle of the Night Crowned Flame has drawn the threads in your skein into a new pattern. Examine the design to gain insights into a possible evolution.

Momentum carried through each cleaving strike while under the mantle of the Iron Edged Stone has altered the tangle of threads in your skein. Consider where these partial patterns might lead if drawn to completion.

Your rage, burning through the mantle of the Ashen Crown, kindles fire in your skein, yet hope cools it. Opposites intertwine, but the design is unfinished. Seek the shape of balance.

The shadows of fear interlace with your glory beneath the mantle of the Battle Born Dreadfire. The weave hums with contradiction. Explore whether harmony—or dominance—unlocks evolution.

Justice’s fire burns steady beneath the mantle of the Verdant Flame, but uncertainty flickers through it. The skein waits for a choice between passing judgment and pursuing triumph.

Your constant berserking rage while bearing the mantle of the Blood-steeped Inferno has drawn new threads to the fore. Study your skein!

Your speed, bolstered by the use of the Mantle of the Adamant Swift Blaze, has pulled the threads of your skein in a new direction. What insights could this impart?

Your mantle, the Radiant Shadowflame, brightens with hope, but the glow diffuses, unshaped. Lenses may focus scattered light into brilliance.

Glory resounds in your skein like a bell struck again and again beneath the mantle of the Golden Pyre, yet the echoes fade without unison. Forge them into a chorus.

Your victories uplift others, and the mantle of the Flame-Bearer’s Crown strains to reflect this. Threads of shared triumph gather. Do you see their pattern?

Each message had sparked hope in his heart, and Victor had made haste to a place where he could contemplate his skein and mantle, only to wind up frustrated. Whatever change or message the System said awaited him in his spirit space was not obvious, though sometimes, he’d see an inkling of what was going on—threads in new places, others glimmering with faint light, or an entirely new tangle.

Meanwhile, his framework was a graveyard of half-born mantles, each with a name and shape but no lasting soul—a thousand crowns of ash. The System’s cryptic clues had yet to lead to a breakthrough, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Victor had singled out the changed threads and tried to weave them into his mantle. He’d tried to alter it to accommodate the System’s riddle-like messages. All he’d managed to do was change the name, and the only actual change he’d been able to discern was in the tone of his aura.

He supposed that wasn’t entirely true. Sometimes his mantle seemed to alter the efficacy of his abilities. When he’d had a mantle called “Blood-bearer’s Molten Peak,” for instance, he’d found that his magma abilities were more powerful. Likewise, for his null-frost abilities, when he’d created a mantle called “Frozen Terror of the Depths.” Even so, he’d gained no new feats, and every single mantle iteration had given him the same level-up benefits: twenty strength, twenty will, and twenty free points.

Of course, that had always struck him as a clue in itself—the attribute distribution. Why no intelligence? Why no agility or dexterity? He’d altered his mantle so many times, but, in effect, it was essentially the same. Victor peered at his mantle framework, focusing on the intricate woven threads at its heart. Was that the problem? He’d rewoven and altered the greater pattern so many times, he’d added complicated weave after weave into the pattern, but he hadn’t started over—not from scratch. Not in years.

The framework loomed before him like a great, tangled cathedral—impressive from a distance, but hollow when he pressed his will against it. Every time he touched it, to test its weight, it shuddered like it knew he didn’t believe in it.

He stepped closer, frowning as he stretched a hand toward it. Was he really going to do this? Was he going to unravel a thousand threads from hundreds of complex patterns, all of which he’d had to research and plan, devising elder-magic-like three-dimensional weaves? He supposed he had his notes. He could probably reconstruct the mantle in half the time if he needed to…

But what if he tore too deep? What if all he did was unravel a thousand carefully curated memories and patterns? What if unspooling them all simply dragged his skein into chaos? What if he couldn’t pull some order out of the mess? What if the frustration of it undid something fundamental in his mind? Already, he avoided the challenge. Already, he sought excuses to keep him busy otherwise…

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Victor’s fingers hovered over the nearest thread, and the entire framework seemed to quiver in anticipation, daring him to pull. His chest tightened, breath shallow, like he was about to unmake not just his mantle, but himself. The idea awakened something in him, and his spirit reared its prideful head. With a growl, he grabbed ahold of a fistful of threads and pulled, ripping them away from the framework.

They pulled free with a sound like wet silk tearing, sharp and endless, echoing through his spirit space. As they unwound, their colors separated, and vivid primaries flared in his vision, streaks of red, gold, and blue scattering like sparks as they fell away to dangle and drift toward the skein.

With savage abandon and a mad look in his eyes, Victor clawed at his framework with both hands, pulling and ripping, shredding the mantle as he wrenched the threads free and hurled them aside, where they floated and reeled into the void until they came to rest near his skein, tangled or loose.

The framework shuddered and shook beneath his assault. He felt it in his heart, his Core, his spirit. He wasn’t gentle; hooks twanged, vibrating like breaking bowstrings, and the uncomfortable almost-pain of it was cathartic. The sensation only amplified his frenzy, his violence, and in a matter of minutes, he’d undone thousands of hours of labor.

He stood, heaving for breath, watching the torn threads drift, slowly finding their way back to the skein. Their frayed ends gradually smoothed out, and soon he was staring at a great tangle of threads that looked achingly familiar—nearly the same raw chaos he’d seen when he first came into his spirit space.

Standing there, despair and glee warring for space in his mind, he realized he’d never undone the threadlock. Groaning with anticipatory despair, he reached into the center of the frame and pulled the lever. As soon as he released the lock, a thousand tiny shreds of colorful threads drifted into the void of his spirit space, fading from sight as they dissipated into nothingness.

***Your mantle has been removed. Further Energy gains will be added to your Energy Well until you have formed a new mantle.***

“Son of a bitch,” he groaned, the weight of what he’d just done finally sinking in.

Victor turned and paced around his spirit space. He had a lot of room to do it in; over the last few years, he’d spent time pouring Energy into his space, building it into a kind of home away from his various material plane homes. His skein and framework were in the heart of it, his “study,” but he’d built a pathway and garden leading away from that space, and that was where he walked.

Victor was no gardener, but he’d been in many beautiful places designed by people who truly knew what they were doing. Using those memories, he’d built a lovely, peaceful place where he could walk and contemplate. Flowers lined the cobbled walkway, which opened onto little courtyards featuring fountains and sculptures. Though there was no sky—he’d yet to try to alter the gray expanse that stretched into eternity—he could lose himself among the tall shrubberies and the tinkling of the water as it fell from nearby fountains.

He didn’t want to continue on without a mantle. Even standing there in his spirit space without one, he felt naked and exposed. He figured he had to, at the very least, build the basic structure of his first epic breakthrough. He didn’t like that plan, though; he wanted to create something new. Why tear everything down if he was going to start from the same place? So, he thought about what he’d done before, and he tried to think of things from different angles.

In his mind, his most significant breakthrough had come to him when he’d realized that he could pattern the threads of his mantle in ways that resembled elder magic spell patterns. He thought about how the System tried to steer people away from elder magic, how it even sent assassins out to deal with “disruptors” like him—well, not like him; people who were like him but who also taught their elder magic to others.

If he’d accepted the System’s aid in forming his mantle, he wondered how far along he’d be. Would he be on his way to being a veil walker with something like his previous mantle? Epic wasn’t so bad, was it? He almost wondered whether the System would step in if he beseeched it for help. Would it add some more training wheels? A “status” sheet for his mantle? He pushed the thought away. It was just a distraction; there was no way he’d go crawling back to the System—he might as well fasten a collar around his own neck.

He traced his thoughts back to the idea of elder magic, and he began to have an inkling of an idea. He’d built his previous mantle like a conglomeration of individual elder magic spells, each one formed by woven threads of his life—some rage here, some fear there, a bit of hope and inspiration, a dash of axe-fighting, and moments of triumph and tribulation for added effect. Should his mantle consist of a bunch of individual moments, though? Was he not building the story of his life, the “mantle” he wanted to wear into true immortality?

Perhaps he needed to construct his mantle like a potent, massively complex, single elder magic spell pattern. Maybe he needed to build that initial pattern in such a way that it could tie into the other patterns he pulled into the framework. He’d been sort of doing that with his previous mantle. He’d carefully planned it to be balanced, and, of course, everything had to be connected, but every cluster of threads, every pattern he built into it, had been its own construct, complete in itself.

What if he tried to build one enormous pattern in which each composite part was reliant on the others? What if his mantle wasn’t meant to be a collection of moments, but the story of his life, woven into a whole—a single elder magic pattern large enough to hold everything he was… “Everything I want to be.”

The idea felt right. It felt good. For the first time in a long while, he had a direction to move in, and it had all come from finally admitting defeat and wiping away the work he’d already done. How many times had he tried to do that? How many times had he stood before that mantle, wanting to rip it to shreds out of frustration? How many times had he talked himself out of it, worried about losing everything he’d invested?

Victor caught himself starting to celebrate mentally, as though he’d done something significant. All he’d done was come up with an idea, and odds were good that it wouldn’t result in anything. “Settle down, pendejo. All you did was rip up your mantle.” He walked back through his garden, still contemplating his idea.

If he were going to build a new mantle—a cohesive pattern that integrated and relied on each section, each sub-pattern—then the center had to be perfect. It would be the root of his mantle’s pattern, the trunk from which all the component parts would branch. He kept coming back to the idea that his mantle was a reflection of him—of his life, the things he’d learned, the losses and victories he’d experienced. What was central to him? What was the very root of his being?

“Abuelita,” Victor said softly. He hadn’t thought of his grandma in a while, or, if he had, they’d been fleeting thoughts. Frowning, he sat down on the edge of a fountain. It was a pretty thing—tarnished copper with a green patina, shaped to look like a flowering plant with broad leaves from which the water descended into the pool. Sitting on the attached bench, Victor tried to confront why he’d been avoiding thoughts of his abuela.

Was it guilt? Did he believe he’d failed her somehow? Should he have found a way back to her? If he’d been pulled through time, though, if she was long gone from this plane of existence, was that his fault? He wished he knew for sure. Was she still alive somewhere? Was she in a different universe? Was she gone to dwell with his ancestors? He could find out. Hadn’t Tes said she knew a dragon who could construct a portal to Earth now that she had his blood?

He felt his hands clenching into fists and pushed the thoughts aside. He was getting distracted again. He could confront that question when he next spoke to Tes, but for now, he had to accept that whether alive or dead, his abuelita’s spirit was out there, and she’d helped shape the man he’d become. She’d helped him to form his core identity—his values and personality. “So, the first pattern should involve a memory of her.” Victor jumped up and hurried through his garden, back into his study.

He stared at the skein, then reached into it, pulling and shoving threads, looking for the one he had in mind. He wanted a memory that combined elements of hope, fear, and rage, but he wanted it to be overall positive. Finally, he saw it there. A delicate, almost invisible thread, shimmering with silvery-gold tones. He held it up, peering closely at it, noting the faint undertones of red that shaded toward purple. It was pretty, and the memory, when he closed his eyes and savored it, was bittersweet.

Victor lay on the hard plastic seats, trying to curl his legs in such a way that their edges wouldn’t dig into his hips and ribs. His head rested on a soft lap, and he felt the gentle caress of fingers brushing through his hair. “Ya, niñito,” his abuelita’s voice said, and Victor realized he was crying. “It’s hard, but things will get better. Todo va estar bien…”

Victor blinked back tears as he pulled away, viewing the memory from a bit more distance. He’d been in the hospital, in the waiting room. They’d just found out his mom had died, and he’d felt his world come crashing down on him. He’d been angry, but more than that, he’d been scared. He could only imagine how awful things would have been without his grandma. Her words might have seemed like platitudes to some, but to Victor, they’d been a lifeline.

She’d been there for him, and she’d reminded him that he wasn’t alone. He’d had a rough year or two after that, but she’d been with him every step of the way—through his meltdowns, his fights, his attempts to run away. Even his grandpa had struggled to deal with him, but all he’d ever gotten from his grandma, his dear, sweet, selfless abuelita, was kindness. Smiling, with tears streaming down his cheeks, Victor took that thread in hand and began to weave. If he were to build a new mantle, this would be the root that gave it strength.