The moonlight was soft, feeble, but the glow coming from the heating-disk on the ground dyed all their faces in red. They sat in a lose semi circle around it, Aleem at the centre of their formation, Wulry and Serend to his sides and R’shai and the Olomti woman at the extremities.
They’d been silent for almost an entire minute after Aleem was done talking. Their limp reactions were understandable, even if concerning. Anyone would need a moment to gather their thoughts after everything he’d just dumped on their laps.
Aleem’s biggest fear now was being treated like dead weight. If they abandoned him here, he’d be screwed. Starting off with a measure of candour was a much better option than lying, getting caught and then expediting his being ditched. He didn’t have the emotional energy to play any mind games right now.
Wulry had roped him into their Quest, and in the game, the [Quest Adjunct] Title offered benefits to both the adjunct and original quest beneficiary, but Aleem had little hope of that being reason enough for them to keep him around. The uncompleted transaction with Wulry was yet another bust. Even though his oaths to Speckled-Eye required him to lend a measure of protection to Clients in the middle of a transaction, Speckled-Eye unreservedly prioritised the lives of their brokers over any Client. It was hard to keep business going if your limbs and sensory organs were expendable, after all.
Worse still, based on the terms of commensurateness Aleem had agreed upon, Wulry and his team had just saved Aleem’s life. If anything, Aleem was in their debt now.
He felt resigned in a strange sort of way. Stubbornness had always been a defence mechanism for him. If he was going to die, he’d prefer to do it on his own terms.
“Okay,” Wulry finally muttered, a hand rubbing the side of his face. “I expected something real doomy, but this is just… wow. I mean, it’s not doing you any favours here, lad. A bunch of Vriorians tracking you, that we could have probably handled, but this?”
He grimaced. “I think I speak for all of us when I say that I have half the mind to leave you here with two days worth of rations and be on my way.”
“Half the mind?” cawed the Olomti woman whose name Aleem had yet to learn. Her hair was shorn very low, and, much like R’shai, her arms were crossed over her breastplate.
“It was an expression, Hetti,” Wulry said.
“Oh, don’t go soft on me,” the woman called Hetti said. “We should have already put a village’s worth of distance between us and him as fast as horse speed would allow. The boy has two gods—tWo—out for him, and you’re only half convinced to cut him loose?”
Aleem winced. “Technically, one of them isn’t … a god … yet.”
The woman gave him an unamused look. “Oh, thank you very much for that. Just a god and a half then? That’s a whole lot better than two.”
“It doesn’t seem like you trying to garner sympathy, but I just have to make sure,”R’shai finally said, eyes boring a hole into him. She’d probably been combing over his words in her mind. “Is that what you’re doing?”
Aleem sighed. “You told me you wouldn’t tolerate sabotage. I’m just trying to show you how our goals conveniently coincide without complication. I’m giving you context for the things you already know so that you’ll see why—”
Hetti made a rolling motion with her index fingers. “Which is the long-winded way of saying …”
Aleem clasped his hands in his lap and looked at R’shai and Wulry. “Take me with you to the Deyegint Stretch.”
Silence followed, but Aleem treated it as an invitation to explain further.
“Orotaz, the [Warlock], he’ll be working very hard to recommence that ritual, and my patron Tutelar will not stop hounding me through her agents until I’m taken off the bo—”
“Can’t speak for the others,” Hetti said drolly, “but you’re inspiring so much confidence in me already.”
Aleem bit the inside of his cheek. “I’m saying that the divine entities are single-minded in their conflict. I couldn’t deter them if I tried. Not directly. I need your help in disabling the [Warlock]. He’s the one variable I can easily influence.”
Wulry puckered his lips and narrowed his eyes. “Go on.”
“You can’t seriously be considering this,” Hetti said in exasperation. “Even just entertaining the thought is so—it’s so stupid, I can’t even put it into words.” She jabbed a gauntleted finger at Aleem. “He is a pre-incarnation.” She loaded so much contempt into the word that Aleem almost felt personally attacked, but he understood the sentiment. Sort of. “We’re thieves, not an orphanage.” She turned to Aleem, grimacing. “No offence.”
Aleem cocked an eyebrow.
“We should at least hear him out,” Serend said, fiddling with her hair. She’d left her shlöck back in the wagon and sat now with her legs tucked under her.
Hetti brightened at that, as though something had just occurred to her. “You know who should hear him out? That powerful backer Nii mentioned. Because this isn’t our problem. I say we find that backer and then hand the boy over to them. Shades! Little princess here,” she gestured at Serend, “could even volunteer to do it.”
“All this time,” Wulry said, “we’ve been worried about the Quest’s somewhat arbitrary fail condition. ‘Reclaim it before unspeakable evil is wrought’ doesn’t do more than give us an invisible clock to work with, but—”
“Oh, don’t give me some rubbish spiel about redundancies,” Hetti cut in. “You hardly need to witness the emergence of an incarnation to know whether or not we’ve failed the Quest. That’s what your schema is for, you gobdaw.”
“Actually,” Aleem said, pushing down his queasiness, “the very first phase of the ritual requires me to be added to Daranirajido’s thralldom before he … fuses with me. That’s the only known way the Dawalian relic would work for him. You could use me as an early alarm system. Once I’m thralled, you’ll know how soon to abort.”
Hetti blinked at him, slack-jawed. A bewildered crease marred her forehead. “I… That’s…”
“Suicidal,” Serend finished for her sputtering companion. She wasn’t looking directly at him, but it felt like she was observing him closely.
Well, if he did nothing, he was going to die, anyway. This was merely him determining just how hard he fell. “Look,” he said in a tight voice. “I won’t bother concealing the obvious; I’m desperate. And my odds are not looking great without some assistance, so I’m trying to lay my cards on the table.”
Wulry and R’shai shared an uncertain look.
“There are other ways I can be of service,” Aleem pressed. “That very… specific problem you both share, for example.”
“Specific…” Wulry’s eyes brightened in recognition. “The blackmail thing you mentioned earlier.”
R’shai’s breathing could be heard, and her gaze bore down on Aleem like a rumbling storm.
Aleem cast a half-hearted glare at the man for that careless statement, then turned to R’shai. “This is the opposite of blackmail. I’ll admit that I was going to use it as a bargaining chip with Wulry, but that wasn’t out of any ill intent. Just business as usual. I want you to know that if I wasn’t in such a terrible situation, I would have just handed you this information freely. That’s the honest truth.”
“You’re dallying, lad,” Wulry said. His voice was artificially light, implying great effort was being employed to keep it that way. “Rambling gives me the yellow eye, and we’re all big girls here. We can handle … difficult news.” He bumped his elbow into R’shai’s armoured arm. “Can’t we, Nii?”
“Is it about Diris Cortio?” R’shai asked Aleem. Her voice shook.
“Yes,” he said, letting out a breath. “I know where he is being kept.”
The already fraying smile on Wulry’s face fell off while R’shai’s sharp gaze turned very, very distant. There was an air of danger that felt nothing like the killing intent he’d experienced in the gallery from the death-squad. This one felt much subtler, and he wondered whether he was imagining it. The red light from the heating-disk tainting everything certainly wasn’t helping his imagination.
Aleem swallowed. His recollection of Luctari’s abrupt breakdown plagued him now, as did his knowledge of the R’shai from Tales of Woe. He forced away the memories. This was not the same R’shai from the game. “I won’t keep back anything vital,” he said. “And while you’ve been nothing but civil up to this point, I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t… attack me.” He was speaking mostly to R’shai. She looked the far menacing of the two.
The red light from the heating-disk left a lot to be desired, but Aleem thought he could see R’shai’s bottom lip quivering. “Where?” she whispered in her most unfriendly tone yet, her voice cracking with emotion. “Where is he?”
“Monwinth Academy,” Aleem answered. “It’s in Wesse. I … confirmed his location myself. He’s been there for some years now.”
“How did you confirm it?” she asked
Despite plumes of mild heat wafting off the disk, the night was cool, but Aleem wiped a sheen of sweat off his forehead. He’d given up on acting poised. Body language went beyond feigning confidence, and R’shai wouldn’t care how calm he looked when she could just read his distress plainly. “You already know I have secrets,” he said and his pitch only wavered a bit as he held R’shai’s gaze firmly. “There are things I absolutely won’t share, and this is one of them. But you can at least tell that I’m being honest, and I know how little that says about what might actually be true. Still …” he shrugged.
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A warm sensation washed over Aleem with far more tactile force than any of the previous times. It felt like he’d been wrapped in a thin, watertight, plastic film, after which he was doused with heated water. It didn’t hurt, but it was very uncomfortable. The sensation teetered on that precipice of foreboding, almost as though he’d start feeling pain any second.
Her scan ended, and he was left unscathed.
“Dear gods. He believes what he’s saying,” she said, voice hollow and powerful, but there was a dead look in her eyes. She turned to Wulry. “Dear gods. I feel like ….” She grabbed onto Wulry’s right hand. “Do you think we’re being toyed with?”
“Yes,” Aleem answered, even though the question hadn’t been posed to him. In the game, there’d been a very fictive aspect to the magic system. It was tied heavily to the Pathos stat, and required an individual to play a role. To perform while the very fabric of reality served as stage and audience. Luctari had referred to herself as a narrator, an ability in-game that could determine the coure of eventology. Many player characters subscribed to this concept of fate or happenstance, as some called it, was something that could be steered and manipulated by divine entities and a few mortals.
Since his arrival on Orig, Aleem had nursed the distinct feeling that he was being toyed with. Someone was pushing things in a very specific direction. Certain someones. None of this could be written off as mere coincidence. It was almost scripted. But what could he do about it? For now, nothing.
“I believe we are being toyed with,” he said to her. “We are all pawns in the machinations of the powerful.” It was a nifty little quote from the game, but he did not shy away from using it.
“With all this talk of gods, that’s hardly surprising. This all feels calculated,” Wulry said, just a trace of bitterness leaking into his tone. Though much stiffer than it’d been before, his smile was back in place.
“You know this academy?” R’shai asked her cropped-haired companion. “Monwinth?”
Aleem squinted his eyes at her.
Hetti nodded emphatically, her face slightly ashen. Anyone that knew R’shai and Wulry long enough would know a thing or two about Diris. “I studied there for a few years when I was younger,” she said. “Very research driven.”
R’shai looked intently at Aleem. “You … said this wasn’t blackmail?”
“It isn’t,” he replied not unkindly, giving her a comradely nod. Once more, he divulged at length. It didn’t take long.
The whereabouts of Diris Cortio were a side quest that came up much later in the game. He was a teenage boy who’d been born with a very unusual ability, and tracking him down had been a major part of uncovering Wulry’s backstory. Though, Aleem supposed that Diris wouldn’t even be seven years old right now. In the game, Wulry and R’shai had failed to find him in time, and the storyline had revolved around putting an end to someone they’d been searching for.
Fortunately for Aleem, the boy’s precise placement was easy enough to pin down, thanks to the fact that he was being confined beneath a very prestigious landmark in-game. Aleem relaid everything he knew about Diris’s condition and the location in question, even going as far as providing the closest thing to coordinates and offering to act as a guide. He tried to be as helpful as he possibly could, giving much more information than might have been warranted.
“We have to go there now,” R’shai said hurriedly once Aleem was done.
“Nii,” Wulry said to her in a soft voice. “You know you… we can’t leave. Not until we fail the quest.”
They’d told Aleem that this quest was Wulry’s, but perhaps that had been a half truth. Quests were received by swearing an oath, and one didn’t lightly brush aside their oaths to gods, not unless such a one had a death wish.
She sagged in on herself and her shoulders started to tremble. Wulry moved to face her, cupping the nape of her neck, and placing his forehead against hers. Aleem noticed now, just how much bigger R’shai was than her red-haired companion. She was taller than him and much bulkier. They were both crying quietly.
Aleem averted his gaze and saw that even Hetti had looked away. It was embarrassing to watch something that felt this personal. Serend just twiddled strands of her hair, a sad smile tugging at her lips.
“We have to go,” R’shai whispered through sobs.
“Nii, you know we can’t do that.”
Hetti cleared her throat urgently and everyone turned her. “Have we considered the possibility that this Twenty-two guy has a way of fooling your Skill? Because I can’t help feeling that it’s just too convenient that he knows exactly what to say to push your buttons. He’s basically turned you both into… a blubbering mess.
“You’re paying handsomely, but I’m already putting my life on the line here, Nii, and this isn’t what I signed up for. If his backer is some big shot like you’ve said, then this might all be part of some elaborate ploy that accomplishes … Shades alone know. My great, great grand-da is like that, and I really can’t stand feeling like we’re being manoeuvred. I don’t like it.”
“Is that possible?” Serend asked. She wasn’t looking at anyone, but it was clear she was speaking to R’shai. “For your Skill to be fooled, I mean? Do you think he might be able to do it? Maybe an artefact or…”
R’shai shook her head, sniffling. “It’s always a possibility where Skills are concerned, but my [Assay] is low mastery, and unless he has an obverse Skill of equivalent level, I don’t see how that would be possible. Artefacts are another matter all together. Serend didn’t notice anything on him beyond the paraphernalia in his bag. One of them is a spiff-lock and it hasn’t even been actuated.
“[Assay] is a phrene compact. To act directly on the Skill itself would take an item out of legends. I can’t see anyone wasting something so precious on us, to say nothing of concealing it thoroughly from Serend’s scans. What would be the purpose of that? That said, you raised an important point.”
“I made like six solid points,” Hetti murmured.
R’shai didn’t react to that. “It’s unlikely that you are deceiving us, Twenty-two. Your master, however, she might be deceiving you. Belief in things holds no truth value.”
Aleem gave her a tired shrug. “I can give you reasons to believe my claims, but I don’t have hard proof. My assurance carries little weight. I’ve told you that I’m willing to head over to Wesse with you. I’ll be of great help there. As long as I don’t die, that is.”
“Yeah, but what if you aren’t who you say you are?” Hetti asked. “What if you’re some… fourth Elevation schmuck wearing a god grade disguise?”
“You’d talk to a paragon that way, would you?” Serend asked, more than a hint of ridicule in her voice.
“I don’t think it’s unreasonable to travel with the boy,” R’shai said.
“You’re prejudiced,” Hetti protested weakly.
“Yes,” R’shai conceded. “I think he’s an asset as he is. Someone is certainly coercing events to work out this way, and I’d be loath to resist when it favours me so well.”
“Likewise,” Wulry said with a long sigh. His eyes were red. “I can’t pretend like this is purely pragmatic. Initially, it cost us little to help, and Twenty-two seemed like a good lad. Now, though, it’s very personal.”
Hetti threw her hands up. “We’re dead,” she moaned, though there was far less heat in her voice than before. “Very dead, dead people, that’s what we are. Not only would we have those noik Vriorians chasing us, the very nipper you’re trying to keep safe might transform into an abomination and chomp down on all our heads. Fantastic. This is the sort of ending I’ve always envisioned for myself. When we die very horribly, I want you to remember who the voice of reason in this group was.”
Aleem thought he saw Serend roll her eyes. Could blind people do that?
“Welcome aboard, lad,” Wulry said, reaching over and bumping a fist against Aleem’s shoulder. He got off the ground. “Let’s head out. We move through Fouts and stop at Lons to pick Beb. Then it’s on to the valley nonstop.”
“That’s fine,” Hetti said, resigned. “We can change out the horses there.” She rose to her feet, glancing at their wagon, frowning. “Maybe get something larger, too. This one won’t hold all of us.” She headed over to the heated-disk, and began packing it up.
While everyone else walked towards the wagon, Aleem moved over to Wulry and asked. “Could I trouble you for a set of foci?”
Wulry cocked an eyebrow. “Aren’t you a little too young for—you know what? Why not?” He shoved a hand sideways.
Aleem swivelled his head, hoping to catch the spirit tool’s dimensional storage in operation, but by the time he’d tracked the man’s hand, Wulry was holding a wooden trio of two-layered rings. He tossed it to Aleem, who fumbled to catch it, heart thumping in his chest.
They loaded up into the wagon. R’shai and Hetti out front, while Aleem, Serend and Wulry settled within. Wulry retrieved a heavy napkin and placed it over his eyes.
The vehicle moved at a sedate pace, but it was probably for the best. He knew that the Fouts encampment was about two hours from Wotbourne proper. This felt about two-thirds the speed that Tanton’s carriage had been moving at the time, so good time, considering their numbers.
“Is your Sithen full-formed?” Serend asked, pointing at his cupped hands that gingerly cradled the foci. Her voice bore a lot more curiosity than it did judgement.
And in spite of his confusion about how she was seeing anything, it was a valid question to ask, since incarnations often preferred children whose Sithens had yet to truly coalesce.
Coalescence of the Sithen was a person’s existence being recognised in the Weave, and it had as much an effect on Skills as it did Classes. If she had an inspect-type Skill, which he was starting to suspect she did, she’d probably be able to glean the most basic information from him, and this included the fact that Aleem’s body was currently that of a fourteen-year-old.
“Only one way to find out,” he said. With great care, he slid the linked bands on and almost instantly felt a prickling sensation at the tips of his fingers and toes. Even the roots of his hair, though that was to a lesser extent. It was reminiscent of what had happened when he practiced Haimol’s advanced visualisation technique.
Aleem flexed his fingers. He’d worn the foci on the fingers starting from his pinky, covering three and leaving three uncovered. His extra finger—on each hand—was a very prehensile extra middle finger.
He’d finally obtained something he’d been looking forward to getting for so long. Well, it’d been just a few days, if even that. He knew quite a few spells, many of them terribly out of his league, but cantrips were a very good starting point for most people with decent enough values in Cognition and Will, and his seemed to be fairly decent. He decided to ask.
Serend weighed her head from side to side. “Where I’m from, you’d be considered a true talent if you got any of your values above 10 before turning fifteen, actually. Things really slow down past 10, but it gets even worse by the time you hit the 20s.”
Huh.
Spells often required complex mana patterns, along with hand gestures, and spoken words, which could be elided after periods of dedicated practice. Cantrips were similar but much less bound by those rules, thus one could forego mana patterns, hand gestures and spoken words entirely, and still end up with an approximation of what they desired.
One Outworlder [Archmage] in ‘Tales of Woe’ had described them as ‘mana sinks’, which, while apt, was quite ironic. Because of how low the complexity on cantrips was, one could funnel as much mana into accomplishing something specific, and their intent would guide and shape that desired effect. It was shamelessly wasteful, but cantrips were primarily about utility, and most people cared little about refining their mana control and learning the mana patterns needed.
Giddily, he activated [Trance], and instantly a stillness came over him, even as the wagon swayed. The tingling at his fingertips had not ceased like he’d presumed, because he could feel them once more. Faint but unmistakable.
He imagined the effect he wanted, holding it firmly in his mind. Something very easy, and relatively harmless. A cantrip that had gone by the title ‘self-lantern’. He muttered the words with feeling.
Aleem was overtaken by a great sense of vertigo. His head hit the wooden wall beside him as he staggered in his seat. “Woah. Okay.” He pushed out his hands to brace himself, almost elbowing Serend in the face. “Sorry.”
“Looks like you succeeded,” she noted.
He blinked. His right hand was pressed against the wall, and in the dimness of the vehicle, all his fingers shone with a sickening cream-hued light that made his skin crawl.
It was quite uncomfortable, but that did little to dampen his excitement. He held his glowing fingers before his face.
“Well, isn’t that something?” Wulry muttered, lifting his napkin to peer at Aleem’s hand. “First time?”
“Yup,” Aleem said distractedly, waving his fingers about in fascination. He was smiling, he realised. He looked at Wulry and tilted his head. “You wouldn’t happen to have a primer on cantrips and low casting, would you?”
Wulry chuckled and dropped the napkin back over his eyes, leaning his head against the wall of the wagon behind him. He crossed his hand over his body and retrieved a rectangle as though it’d just been lying there on the bench all along.
He tossed the frail softback at Aleem, a book with flimsy yet coarse pages. It smelled like dry leaves and firewood. Aleem held it up and brought his glowing fingers to illuminate the cover. The light was sufficient.
There scrawled on the top of the book’s cover were the words in bold case, ‘Fundamentals of Mana Control and Desire Moulding for Children’.
“Your education is lacking,” Wulry said, a smile in his voice.
Oh, it certainly was. Aleem’s cheek hurt from how widely he was smiling. He turned to the first page.