“Ah,” Efrain said, “a problem child?”

The man shifted uncomfortably in his seat, realising that he’d worn his emotions too openly.

“Well, that is to say,” he began, “what I meant to say is-”

“You need not lie to me,” said Efrain, “not in here. It sounds like you had some difficulty with him.”

“Why do you need to know this?” asked the professor.

“Because I had to cut his arm off a few hours ago, and I would rather like to know what events made it necessary.”

“Oh dear,” he said, palling, “well, I- I guess… ‘problem child’ might be a little too strong. I will say that he didn’t often get along well with many of the academy staff. A decent student, to be sure, but he could be quarrelsome, disobedient. Sometimes with other students as well.”

“And how exactly did he get this injury? The one on his arm.”

“Well, you know how some youths can be. Insults on a warm night, one thing led to another and…”

“There was a brawl.”

Again, the man seemed to chafe against speaking ill about his students. Possibly because they were high-born, Efrain decided.

“Well… a brawl might be a bit crude. Let’s call it an altercation. Between Oswald a handful of friends, and some other students.”

“Led by the son of the Carim? I hear things while walking about.”

“Yes,” the man sighed, “or so the stories go. I wasn’t there to see it myself, but they seem to agree on that much.”

“There also seemed to be some concerns about a poisoned dagger?” Efrain said, giving the man a start, “was it that heated of an ‘altercation’?”

“Well, I don’t know anything about it… I did hear Oswald bragging about it in the halls. This was after he had the injury; it was bandaged. He said that the Carim boy took one swipe and ran like a coward.”

“Hm,” Efrain said, considering the few of the night from the window, “is there any reason to believe it was poisoned?”

“I doubt it,” said the professor, “such things are frowned upon in Karkos. The boy could get his entire house in trouble.”

“I see,” Efrain said, “one last thing. Has anyone in the academy gone to visit him regularly?”

“Well, I think the headmaster went to see him,” he said, “to learn the truth of it, I would think.”

“That’s all then. Thank you for your time,” Efrain said, and saw him out, leaving him alone in the room.

So the Madros boy was not well liked and had a wound infected after a street brawl. Efrain dispelled the charm around his office and picked up his sets of notes on the third book. He could understand why the headmaster might’ve lied about it, protecting high-born students was part of his job, but why to him? Was he so desperate to save face that he was willing to risk it?

He wasn’t disturbed again that night as he picked through the rest of the third book and into the fourth. It was only when the light of his third day in Karkos began to shine through the window, that Efrain put the notes down. The exhaustion that he had experienced in the hall of the dead had only deepened. He wasn’t supposed to feel this, he was sure of that, but alas it sent him down to the bed, where he felt darkness begin to overtake his vision.

When he next woke, he was on a collection of canals and plazas, blank buildings drifting aimlessly disconnected from the ground. They floated, reshaping and reforming on some arbitrary current. Standing in the centre of the large stone plaza, was the mass of papers and ink.

“What, again?” he said, his mind sharper than before, “and no library this time.”

The mass stood perfectly still, and Efrain had the distinct impression that he’d shocked it to silence.

“You… shouldn’t be here,” it finally said, “and not three times in a row.”

“I shouldn’t be able to sleep,” he said, “the enchantments holding my body together should come undone at once. I haven’t in centuries, and now I’ve done it twice in as many days.”

The thing stood, swirling, silent, as pages flew off its body and crumpled in an unfelt wind.

“You’ve been displaced. Twice you’ve been brought back from the edge,” said the thing slowly, “but that does not explain how you returned when I have forced you out.”

It moved closer to him, towering over him as languages, both those Efrain knew and many that he didn’t, wrote and rewrote their characters.

“Interesting,” it said.

“What?” said Efrain.

“Your presence cannot be explained by the gathering,” it said, “you resonate with them. You do, but why?”

“Does this mean that I’m immortal?” said Efrain, looking at himself, and finding the familiar black garments.

“No,” said the page wraith, “ ‘Immortal’. Such a strange… thing in your mind. That abstraction, almost like-”

The whole scene shuddered, flickered, and darkened.

“Go back,” it said, “and separate them. Together they are a beacon.”

“A beacon? What-”

“There’s no time ‘Efrain Belacore’! Go!”

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Efrain woke up in the bed, the light in the room suggesting that he’d slept for several hours at least. He tried to remember the dream as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. There was something about a canal and countless moving pages of text, as well as the distinct sense he needed to break something apart. He moved back to the desk, intending to get back to the fourth volume, but found that there was a note, hastily scrawled.

The Carim boy is recovering. It will probably be fine, it read, which prompted less questions about Oswald Carim’s condition and more about how the note had landed on his desk. Perhaps a student had slipped in and left it, which spoke to how Efrain had indeed slept. In a dreadful moment, Efrain wondered if his need for drink and food might return, which would be inconvenient, to say the least.

Instead of sitting back down, Efrain wandered, a sense of aimless searching taking him to the academy docks. A boat carted him to the plaza, where he encountered the remains of last night’s feast. There was a whole company’s worth of carpenters working away at broken tables, as well as clearing a new space in the centre. The cooks had their turn, now it was the dancers, then the writers. Of course, half the tables would be empty for the writers convection, unless that was another tradition that had been ‘broken’.

Frankly, Efrain doubted that.

It was as he stood there amidst the shopkeepers, that he became aware that the scene was slightly… shifted. It was a subtle artefact at the edge of vision, like a glass plane laid over the world, which was just a touch too far left or right. Efrain felt the air shimmer with magic, and to his surprise, there was a grey robed figure next to him.

It was the same Occluded as yesterday, the one that he’d bumped into on the street.

“You’re the one,” they said, its voice a reedy whisper as the mask’s eye holes swivelled before him.

Efrain took two steps back and looked around. The shopkeepers milled about, completely uninterested in the pair of them.

“Am I?” he said, “and what exactly would that be, young one?”

The Occluded regarded him in silence. The deep shadow of the mask made it hard to gauge the eyes, even in the bright daylight.

“Your magic…” came the voice, now behind him.

Efrain whirled, finding that, yes, the occluded was behind him, now mere steps away.

“It’s different. Refined. Focused,” he said.

“How would you know that?” Efrain said.

Efrain never even saw the movement, only felt himself pushed backwards, stumbling on the stones.

“Hm,” said the Occluded, “your clothes. Your body is… different.”

“Who are you?” Efrain said, raising his hands and beginning to feel the magic course through them, “no one should be wearing a mask of the Occluded in daylight hours.”

“I see,” said the masked man, “I’ll have to remember that.”

There was something glinting in his hand like motes of dust in sunlight. Suddenly, the world realigned itself, the effect of the glass was gone. The occluded was once more several paces away, despite not having apparently moved. Before Efrain could do or say anything, a man ran up panting with effort.

“There you are!” he said, “I couldn’t see you at all.”

The man had a dark complexion and long pale hair, drawn back from his face. He was dressed in a shirt, vest, and pants, unlike that of Karkos.

“And… who’s this?” he said, looking at Efrain.

“Of minimal interest,” said the grey-robed man, before walking off.

Efrain tried to keep an eye on him, to see how he moved and where he went, but it was like his attention was simply slid off the figure. Efrain could barely watch through his peripheral vision as he vanished around a stall.

“Ah, his trick,” said the man with white hair, “yes, he’s known to do that. Says it makes him ‘less’ interesting, can you believe it?

“Uh… I’m sorry, who are you?” said Efrain.

The man’s off-purple eyes crinkled in amusement.

“My apologies. That was a bit of an awkward introduction wasn’t it? I am Orthelli, in service to the duchess of Inalthia.”

“So, what a representative? Quite a ways away from the forest, aren’t you?” he said, still trying to spy out where the grey man had gone.

“Indeed. But any trader worth their salt is going to have someone here. Can’t miss the Festival of the Occluded. You may as well burn your vessels if you do,” Orthelli said, chuckling, “you can stop now. Whatever he does, he’s quite good at it. I’ll figure it out one of these days though. You are?”

“Efrain,” he said, trying and failing one final time.

“And what is it you do? You don’t look like a native, same as me,” he said, chuckling at whatever he found amusing.

“I teach,” Efrain sighed - he was not in the mood to meet any more new dignitaries that morning.

“Oh! Which school? I’ve always wanted to visit one, but they don’t often offer tours for visitors.”

“The Academy,” Efrain said, “Listen, I don’t mean to be rude but-”

“Well of course!” said the man, “although, I wonder if I could trouble you for one favour. I’ve heard rumours of a regiment of Angorrah soldiers in the city. I thought I might try and seek out their captain if I can, to see if he’s one of ours. Foreigner to foreigner, you wouldn’t happen to know where they might be?”

“The soldiers are outside of their wall, the commander’s being housed with one of the merchant families. Uh, Bramstd, I think. You’ll have to ask for directions from someone else,” Efrain said, ignoring the man’s thanks and walking off into the remains of the plaza.

The magic that was used, and he was sure that was magic, was something fundamentally different than anything else he’d ever encountered. It was so pervasive, and yet so gentle that he’d not noticed its use, nor anyone else. His finger unconsciously found its way to his temple, scratching against the stone as he tried to think about whether he’d ever seen something like it.

Eventually, when he decided that he’d had enough ‘fresh’ air, he departed back to the academy, and his work. The rest of the morning and the early afternoon went by swimmingly, with the fourth and fifth volumes being completed with relative grace. The night was beginning to draw close before another hurried messenger came, this time a priest.

“Sir!” he said, clearly having run up all the steps to his office.

“What?” Efrain said, paused in the middle of underlining a sentence.

“The first son of Carim is dying!”

Efrain stood there, confused for a moment.

“You mean… actively?”

“Yes!” he said, desperation in his voice.

“Okay.”

It was the man’s turn to look befuddled by Efrain's casual response.

“W-what do you mean?”

“Well, if his infection has gotten worse, there’s not that much to do. He’ll either live or die, the next few hours will tell,” Efrain said, scribbling a note about the relative prevalence of Amdrgideons as opposed to Luthranocytes.

“No, you- you don’t understand!” he said, “he’s dying, not of the infection!”

Efrain stopped writing and stared at the man.

“Explain.”

“The lady Clarallel, she says he’s been poisoned!”

Efrain snapped the book shut, stood up, and strode past the priest.

They made their way to the hall of the dead, Efrain taking the steps two at a time. He was directed up to the room where the boy lay, almost still. His face, originally haggard, was now pale on the point of turning blue, chest jerking and stuttering as he attempted to draw a breath. Claralelle was beside him, fiddling this way and that with delicate glass ampules and a beaker.

“Alright Clara, if you want my attention you have it. What happened?”

She turned to him with that blank expression.

“Neurotoxin. Muscle paralysis,” she said while her hands worked this way and that, mixing and matching.

“Can you reverse it?” he said.

She said nothing, only working faster as she cracked this ampule, mixed it, and went onto the next. She drew the result mixture, a dark, yellow-amber concoction, into a syringe and stuck it into the boy’s neck. Efrain waited with an odd sense of calm as he watched it drain to nothing. He should probably feel something, he reflected, as the last of the yellow liquid vanished.

Claralelle was already reaching for others, dumping the beaker and beginning to mix again.

“No good?” Efrain said, looking at the terrified faces of the priests.

“Not waiting to find out,” she said, “it’ll take a few minutes- to… oh.”

It took Efrain a moment to realise that first, she was looking at the boy, and second, the boy had stopped breathing. Claralelle’s fingers race among the ampules, taking three at a time, cracking, mixing, injecting.

A minute went past, then two, then three as the priests waited in agonised silence.

Efrain walked over and regarded the youth’s face, staring blankly up at the ceiling. Well, he thought, this’ll get complicated. He turned to Claralelle, who was injecting the third dose.

“And what made you think he was poisoned and did not simply take a turn for the worse? He already had a nasty infection,” Efrain said.

“His fever was coming down, his heart was becoming strong again,” she said, wrenching the needle back, “there’s no reason for him to up and fail so quickly. And one other thing.”

“It happens,” Efrain said, shrugging, “where’s his sister?”

“My lord,” said one of the priests, barely managing to speak, “she went back, to attend the festival.”

“Weren’t his parents expected soon?” Efrain said.

“Any hour now,” he said, nodding.

“Wonderful. Clara, tell me you have more than medical suspicion,” Efrain said, “if you’re going to throw a charge like murder around, you better have something to back it up.”

“Come see,” she said, gesturing to the side of his neck.

It was hard to see anything, with how swollen it was, but Efrain could see the needle marks from Clara’s injections. And one other, darker mark.

“Is that?” he asked, leaning in further to try and get a better look at it.

“Something was put in his neck,” she said, “and it wasn’t from me. Nor is it here anymore.”

“You’ve got me,” Efrain said, “that is something at least.”

Efrain stood up, wondering about how he had to approach this. If it was revealed that someone had somehow snuck in and poisoned the boy while he was recovering, there would be chaos. But he could tell from a simple glance around the room that there was no way this information would remain private for long. He’d have to get someone then, but who? The commander? No. The academy was limited in its spread and influence.

Efrain sighed as he realised the natural conclusion he was being led to.

“All of you, listen closely,” he said, snapping his fingers as loud as he could, “Listen!”

They all turned frightened eyes towards him.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he said, “as far as we are all concerned, this was an unfortunate accident. A dispute led to a wound that got infected, which took the life of this young man, despite our efforts to the contrary. I want no word of ‘poison’ escaping any pair of lips! Understood?”

They nodded, some still in shock of what they witnessed before them, some almost certainly lying.

“You mean… he’s dead?” One asked.

All of them turned to look at him, a young priest, maybe not even a priest yet.

“You ask him,” Efrain said, spinning on his heel, “Claralelle!”

“Yes!”

“Do whatever investigations you need to do, as quickly as possible. Nothing major, nothing time consuming. Everything needs to be wrapped up and proper before the parents get here,” Efrain said.

“Yes! Fine! Yes,” she said, placing the unbroken ampules back into sleeves and reaching for her bag of tools.

By Efrain reckoning, he may have brought himself an hour, if he was lucky. There was simply no way of telling when the parents were going to get in, and when that happened, one of the priests was going to tell the truth in short order. Hopefully, that would be enough time to prepare some bulwark against the coming chaos.

Efrain ran to the docks, telling the polemen to send him to the Eisen house.