07 - A Ruinous Path

“The Else is the realm of the mind, the hidden foundation of reality. The Else is a place of wonder, truth, and revelation.

The Here, however, can’t stand its naked truth. Channeled without control, the substance of the Else will manifest as fire – the fire of creation and apocalypse, a fire no matter can withstand.”

* Archmage Ikelejon, later known as The Unmaker, during her welcome speech for the Council Academy, year 2603 After Landing

As soon as I recover some strength, Daravoi helps me back to my hiding place in the Tube network.

“Moonbreaker’s tits, this place is disgusting,” he says, looking around and scowling more than usual.

“I didn’t know I’d have friends over,” I answer. I say friends in the most sarcastic way possible, so I can always claim it was meant ironically.

“Ok, but it looks like a rat’s nest,” he adds, pointing to a mass of dirty clothes. “For a rat with low standards.”

“It’s just that stealing cheap clothes is easier than taking them to the laundry, ok?” I point out. I’m not lazy, it’s just more efficient.

I’m blushing, which I hate, it spoils my pale and generically sickly aesthetic.

My room - well, the empty closet I appropriated - was probably a storage space for tube workers. I found it full of half-rotten cardboard boxes, which I pushed outside, hoping I wouldn’t catch typhus. It’s a featureless concrete cube about three meters by three, made even more depressing by the ghostly blue light of my magic. Cheap clothes, empty food bags and magazines are strewn around, only the small book of magic is placed with some care over a not-yet-rotten box.

But I’m starting to grow fond of this place, stupid as it is - it’s mine in a way even my bedroom at home never was, no matter how much I miss the comfy bed.

“Couldn’t you at least clean the floor?” Dara adds, wrinkling his nose and pointing at some gunk on the concrete which has probably been there since the Moonbreaking.

“Hey, it was here already when I came,” I say. “Sorry if I didn’t prioritize stealing industrial cleaning equipment. Aren’t you the poor kid who lived in a cupboard anyway?”

“I grew up on an airship caravan, not in a fucking barn,” he says, a note of actual annoyance in his voice. “Well, at least no one will guess a great mage lives here. Except for the unnatural heat and magical blue light. I think the spell must be going wrong, it’s so fucking hot.”

“The spell works perfectly. I like hot,” I say. And finally, my moms can’t complain that I waste heat.

I feel a stab of pain at the thought of moms, and I bury it immediately. They’re probably happy to have me out of the way, so they can focus on their two non-disappointing children.

“I could try to… disintegrate the dirt away to clean the floor,” Daravoi says, frowning as he thinks.

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“Absolutely not, when you try a new spell you always burn something,” I say. “Does it really annoy you that much? Like, I get it, it’s filthy. I sleep in the bag anyway.”

I try to make it sound casual, but I’m painfully conscious I live in a filthy hole. But making it livable seems incredibly difficult - I’d need soap and water and cleaning-stuff-I-never-used-in-my life, and I’d have to bring it all here, and I feel like I can’t breathe just by thinking about all that. Surviving was hard enough, let alone cleaning.

“I’ve slept in worse places. Maybe. Once or twice,” Dara says, shrugging. “Anyway, it’s fuck-you-oh-clock in the morning, I meant to sleep here, but not sure I’m going to, now.”

“Sorry if it’s not a palace,” I say. “Wait, sleep here?”

“If you’re okay with sharing,” he adds, with a tone that suggests I’d better be okay with it after he saved my ass, “I’ve beenm crashing at a co-worker’s place, but it wouldn’t be nice to come this late.”

The idea of Dara sleeping here feels wrong, in so many different ways. This place is mine, and no one else has a right to it. Plus, if this place is so disgusting, no one else should suffer it. And Daravoi called me a friend, and I haven’t had a friend sleep over since I was eleven, and…

I take a deep breath. He’s tired and he’s been nice to me. My stupid brain can shut up for a while.

“I don’t have another sleeping bag and I’m not going to share,” I say, because I always say something stupid.

He rolls his eyes. “Aren’t you a peach. Anyway, it’s not like I’ll be cold, it’s a hothouse. I’m more worried about cholera.”

I sigh, as theatrically as possible.

“Try your cleaning spell. If you fuck up and collapse the whole tube system over our heads, we’re even with the necklace fiasco.”

He nods, cracks his knuckles, and squats on his haunches - carefully not to touch the floor.

I usually want to glimpse the Else as he performs spells - watching someone else channel magic is fascinating. But I’m tired, and I feel strangely sick at the idea of touching the Veil, so I collapse on my sleeping bag and just look with my regular eyes.

Dara’s eyes gleam dark red, and a mesh of glowing triangles surrounds his fingers. His magic looks so different from mine - it’s all sharpness and angles, while mine manifests as interwoven spirals. Is one of us doing it wrong? Or is there some difference between us? Fuck, that council book doesn’t explain anything.

Dara’s fingers touch the floor, and a glowing red triangle forms around them, then more triangles sprout from its vertices, and more from those, and soon the whole floor is a web of glowing triangles except for the area I’m lying on.

He makes a gesture with his other hand, and his fingers become purple-red glass. A flash of red light, sudden smell of charred plastic, and he waves his hand, sending a thin layer of dust flying to a corner of the room.

The concrete floor is much cleaner now. Actually - it’s not just clean, it’s smooth, like gray stone. I run a finger on it, and it’s like touching marble.

“Cool,” I say, “a pity it now stinks of burning whatever.”

“There’s that,” Dara says, falling to sit against the wall. “Also, uh, maybe I didn’t think this through.”

He raises a crumpled t-shirt from the floor, and I see it’s been slashed to ribbons. I check a sock – sliced neatly in half where it was touching the floor. Wow. He just ruined everything I own.

We look at the ruined fabric, then at each other, and we start laughing at once.

I must be tired, and possibly still shaken, because I can’t stop laughing, and neither does Daravoi. We laugh until I cough and he wipes tears from his eyes.

“Look at us, the powerful mages,” he says.

“The world shall tremble at our feet,” I add.

Then we go to sleep, and I dream of the moon, intact, but blue and clear like aquamarine.

***