Chapter 139: Aperture

They put Sesan on the parlour sofa. Nischov came with the bag he always came with. He took Sesan’s wrist did a few examinations, checking her pulse and temperature before his mouth did the small unhappy thing it did when a number was worse than the story around it.

"She will stay cold. That is not new. What is new is that it is moving. Keep her covered. Do not warm her with fire. If she seizes, you know what to do."

He looked at Estea when he said the last part. Not at Theo. Estea nodded once.

Asterion came in because Theo asked him to.

This time as he was about to enter, Odette, glared at him and pointed at the mat, causing him to dust his boot on the mat before entering inside.

He did not sit.

Estea had the chair by the cold grate. Theo stood where he could see Sesan’s face and the window and the place on the lawn that was only lawn. Uthed took the wall by the door because a man with one working hand still had a wall.

Theo spoke to the chair by the grate:

"You said they’re not the same thing, what could that possibly mean? I thought they were just another name for Gates?"

"The meaning lies in what they help outside the Tower. One connects to Failed Trials, the other connects to the Tower directly."

The elf’s eyes moved between them.

"My mother came in through one. The way your kind does. A Gate, I’d consider a Leakage like Lady Estea had said, a leakage from a trial, a failed trial has to be disposed someway, Gates are how it happens."

’But my system called it a Gate... would that mean even if doesn’t know the difference.

Theo glanced at Estea.

"How do you know what an Aperture is when majority don’t?"

Estea chuckled dryly.

"How do you think I was banished from the Tower, Dimwit."

Theo frowned at the response.

"What? Really?"

Asterion nodded.

"To us who have been discarded from the Tower, being sent out by an Aperture makes sure that going back is not possible."

This caused Theo to sprang up in fury.

"This means you can’t go back to the Tower."

Estea gave him a cold look.

"Sit down. And stop that nonsense shout. Do you even know who your wife it?"

A twisted grin covered her face.

"I can just tear one open should I need to return."

Asterion glanced at her and felt cold shivers across his whole body.

Estea spoke but with a calmer voice

"The Tower does not throw people away and forget the shape of the hole. It keeps the hole. That is what an aperture is. A kept hole. And if the hole still exists, it can be found again. Going back is not in the least of my worries!"

Asterion was silently, then he glanced at Theo and then at Estea, then back at Theo.

"How am I supposed to take her words seriously without asking, who are you? Who is she? Those questions are important to one’s sanity you know?"

Theo scratched his head shyly.

"I don’t know if those questions will help you, or make things worse."

The parlour took a breath and did not let it out.

Theo looked at the two of them and saw the same line drawn under two different lives. A woman in a chair who had been a Transcendent and a Fire Dragon and a floor, and a man of a hundred and forty-three years who had been born on the fourteenth because his mother had come through a door that was not on Earth.

Both of them had been put out, and both of them were in his house.

’Come to think of it, doesn’t this mean Asterion, is like our grandpa?’

And yet, he acted like the least oldest and made it so easy to forget he was over a hundred years old.

But Theo always tried to remember every time when conversing with him. Although more often than not he fails.

Sesan made a small sound on the sofa. The frost at her temple had not receded. Theo was at the cushion before the sound had finished.

Her eyes opened and found the ceiling and then found him, and for a moment the eyes looking at him were not the eyes of the child the curse had left. Then the child came back, and she turned her face into the hoodie sleeve and was only cold again.

[The Frozen Sea: 12.3%]

[Reversion: stable at the new mark]

[Contact effect: spent]

It had been paid for in the two seconds she had used to do what a Champion standing on a porch had not done.

Theo spoke without getting up from the cushion:

"The tall one, the one you said that walked away. It’s probably still around here right and that is dangerous."

Asterion’s gaze went to the window, to the snapped trees, to the north the house did not have a name for.

"I don’t think it’s a good idea disturbing a beast like that. Perhaps things like that are like weather and are better left to pass. Because they will pass."

Theo didn’t let it go:

"I said... describe it."

Asterion opened his mouth.

He shut it again.

"I will not. You will be endangering yourself by going to it. And I will be the cause of it."

Estea’s head turned.

"That is new. Since when did you start disobeying my husband?"

She turned to Theo with a mocking smirk.

"This is why I tell you to put a strong leash on these things hubby."

Theo had a blank expression on his face, but he wouldn’t lie that he almost coughed because he certainly wasn’t expecting that from Estea.

’What the hell is she on about?’

Theo turned to Asterion and asked again:

"Where did it go?"

Asterion looked at Sesan and then Estea, then he finally looked at Theo.

He gave the parlour one direction, and that was all he would give it:

"North. It went north."