Two idly flipped through a book on the second floor of her temporary residence.

It was a dense thing, one of the many Two had skimmed over the two weeks. It was not the most pleasant read.

Two turned the page and saw a picture of a person if people had flesh of fire and bones of jagged obsidian and both grew eyeless faces to scream. Two would’ve very much liked to think the figure on the page was the figment of an ill mind. Some cruel story meant to dissuade over curious children, The dry text beneath it assured her it was not.

Malformed Self of fury and pain, the header read. The above is the result of an Individual failing to bloom and their essence deviating along the axis of pain… On it went terms like ‘Individual’ and ‘Desire’ as if they bore special meaning. As it was for most of the several hundred entries in the book.

Two’s gaze lingered on the image, tears of molten white leaked from the empty sockets of the faces writhing on the thing’s distorted skeleton. The flames bound visages twirled and stretched in grotesque proportion, pulled by the fire they tried to escape. Two couldn’t shake the feeling they moving, that the eyeless hunched that might once have been a persom looked.

Looked and felt hate.

Two flipped the book shut; it closed with a heavy slam that covered her sigh. She squinted at the book just to be sure. When nothing crawled from it she lugged the book over to the small table she kept the others.

Returning to her seat, she stared out the windows. The house’s second floor had changed quickly. All the windows in the room she occupied were pristine and gave an excellent view of the swaying trees outside. Looking at it was hard to think, that beyond the city’s wall monsters like that roamed.

But, she supposed, if the world gave them angels, why wouldn’t it shove demons on them? After all life couldn’t let something just be good.

She leaned back and picked up her knife, and idly whittled away at today’s attempt at a statuette. room’s walls were paper things held together by wood supports and had been amongst the things Abery retrieved from the ground floor’s storage. Two had helped put them in place, dividing the upper floor into halls and rooms. She’d found it odd then and still did now.

Why would someone build from something as fragile as paper? Half the screen’s paper had been eaten through by mold or fallen to dry flaky dust, requiring Abery to send for replacements. She didn’t understand why the governor kept this place for however many decades it had languished alone.

She sighed at an overly deep cut and once again wondered when her ‘teacher’ would arrive. Lancet said they’d come after going over the finer details with Igni. Two had accepted that easily enough. Then the second delay came, citing Two’s utter lack of ‘common sense’ or ‘passable education’ that was when Two’s patience began to fray.

She sighed for the third time in as many minutes and tried to fall into the motion of the knife. Hers wasn’t the type for it and she had no doubt it was hell on the edge. Two didn’t care. This was the first time in years she’d had so much time for herself. As annoying as lancets delays were, they provided plenty excuse to work on a project she struggled to see as more than a waste of time. But it was her time to waste.

A knock on the door interrupted her. She denied the grimace that tried to form and smiled at the door. “Please come in, Abery,”

The boy, who she learned was fifteen, peeked his head into the room, his round ears swivelling anxiously as he did. “Uh, miss a messenger came by with a letter for you.” She’d scented him lingering outside the door and hoped it was that anxious tip-toeing he did whenever he approached.

“Another delay.” She asked with a rueful smile, careful not to show her sharp teeth. Doing otherwise made him more nervous than usual.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled and gave the letter before darting away to stand in a corner. Two had given up trying to make him calm around her, Abery had inherited all the anxiety of his rodent ancestors. He wouldn’t be himself if her weren’t a little afraid.

Two opened the letter’s sparkling gold seal expecting disappointment but reality suprised her.

I will arrive in the evening, by then, I expect a written summation of all you know about essence, the first cycle and deviation to be written upon my arrival.

I will teach if you prove an adequate student.

Rhevier Sovereign.

Two wanted to sigh, she really did, but at this rate, she might run out. “Abery,”

“Yes, miss,”

“Do you know any Rhevier Sovereigns?”

He jolted behind her, and squirmed with more unease than usual “Uh, I think that’s the Lady’s brother.”

Two closed her eyes and took a long slow breath before releasing it in what was in no way a sigh. She opened her eyes. “Abery, could you please tell the emissary I will not be able to accompany him today?” she looked at the table to the room’s side that held her books and failed sculptures. Each of the dozen books was heavy enough to crack someone’s skull open with the right effort. The stack of paper she used to write her reports sat near them. “It seems I will be indisposed for most of it.”

The evening found her surrounded by a mess of papers and poring over a sheaf of them. A headache had grown over the hours passed. Its severity is tracked by the stack of discarded drafts to her side. She leaned back, rubbed her brow, and looked the fruit of labour.

Scrawled across six pages was the sum total of her knowledge of the world’s mystical side. To the side, all about the table, and the one loose page on the floor were her drafts. She flexed aching ink stained fingers and tried to convince herself it was enough.

She hadn’t known the extent of her taint, hadn’t known cultivation could go wrong, that the things spoken of on nights when the rain fell its hardest and the streets drowned could’ve once been people. When the priests roamed the streets singing their sermons, how much of what they said was true?

Even after pouring through the books and standing some of their pages in her haste, she was not confident in the result.

Questions Two had never thought to ask found their way into ink and were cast aside when she discovered she had no answers. She’d never bother to ask the why of it all and this summation came, forcing her to crack the lid to a world of unpleasant considerations.

Abery’s scent wafted into the room, energetic and skittish as always, he knocked a few seconds later. “Come in,” she said without turning too tired to put on a smile.

The sliding door did as its name implied and Abery walked in, followed by a man clad in black. Two jerked to attention.

He was tall though not to the angel’s extent. His inherited features were much like Lancets. Golden slit eyes, scales, mane, horns, but his was a blue so deep it bleed into black. A glimmer, a sheen of colour that flowed where afternoon’s warm light landed just right. His horns, thick branching and ribbed curled like a crown atop his head.

Two’s stomach in discomfort as he swept his gaze over the neat mess on her table, and tried to decide whether the frown on his face was one of displeasure. His pallor and the bags under his eyes hinted it was his default. The fact she couldn’t smell him meant she couldn’t confirm.

Rhevier was white, not pale like some residents and visitors to the city were, but white. Like clouds and paint were white, he was also bruised.

The imperial sat behind the large desk Albery had prepared for him. Two fixed herself into a neutral expression behind hers. Abery went to hide in a corner.

The bruises sat beneath her would-be teacher’s skin, the harm ran along his veins. They writhed and pulsated as if the vessels themselves were trying to tear their way free, but it was a slow rebellion. Welts bubbled and shifted along his skin, melting together in blobs of oddly muted colour before sinking beneath his skin. Fast enough to notice but slow enough to leave one wondering if their eyes deceived them.

Two began to speak but he raised his hand she closed her mouth. He rested his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers, his gold eyes bore into her behind them.

Silence stretched, and she noticed something happening. It wasn’t quite a flavour but something ran along her tongue. A prickling in her skin as a nameless force grew close and heavy and then pulled. Then the light was pulled and and drawn thin.

From the glow of late evening to the dark just before night truly fell the room darkened, but the light was not smothered. It was gathered in blobs of fuzzy luminance to glowing streams that flowed and concentrated until a ball of day sat in Rheviers hand. His head rested in the other.

“Abery, bring me her writings All of them.” He spoke as if all that happened was an utter bore.

Abery scurried to obey, “Most of those are drafts.” Hurried to say as Abery took off with her work.

“I will take it under advisement.” He said without looking at her. He leafed through the pages, a single glance given to each before he went to the next. Yet she had no doubt he captured every detail.

He turned back to her and stared with unblinking intensity. “You are deficient in most ways possible,” he said blandly. “Your handwriting is a level above chicken scratch. What mastery of grammar you do have is undercut by your atrocious spelling. Your understanding of the world’s deeper mysteries is surface level despite what seems to be considerable effort and thought you have not begun to understand the basics of cultivation. Your ignorance is only matched by your effort and ability to comprehend how little you know.“

Two forgot to breath. “You are adequate”

“What” Two blinked rapidly trying to make sense of the many insults and non-sequitur she’d been assaulted with. Abery swayed behind her ‘teacher’ vicarious mortification draining the blood from his face.

Rhevier sighed, and the sound filled the room and stirred the air as if something much larger had breathed. “Two, you are not stupid, have few delusions of knowledge and a willingness to do as told.” His brow furred as if he was pained and the grey concentrated there. “It seems my sister is right. You are a worthwhile project.”

Two’s eye twitched and a sigh creamed out of her a small mortal sound that conveyed just how tiring she thought this was going to be.