CHAPTER 9

Birdie knelt with her hands clenched on her knees, breathing slowly and attempting to focus. The terrific weight of what lay ahead of her seemed to shackle her to the forest floor, rooting her there as she tried to find something to ground her. Every time she tried to open her eyes or rise, the world swam erratically through her field of view, and her senses flooded with information that blocked her ability to function.

She and Ventas had landed on the base of the steps outside of Epictus’s pavilion. He’d gotten to his feet first and told her to wait while he fetched his things stashed nearby. Typically this would have bothered her. A civilian had recovered faster than her- a trained cadet. That was embarrassing. Uncalled for. Shields would have her hide for it.

But as Ventas disappeared silently into the fold of the trees, Birdie could only think of how thankful she was for the moment to herself.

Now that she was out of Epictus’s pavilion, the world seemed to have made a shift. There was power everywhere. She couldn’t seem to stop herself from noticing it in everything. Her eyes felt naturally drawn to it as magic glowed and buzzed on everything from trees to shaking leaves, to even the stars twinkling above. It looked like swirling bunches of light and darkness were dusted over everything like a layer of dazzling snow. And what's more, it even seemed to linger when she closed her eyes. Faint remnants of shining light burned into her vision, and were bright enough to see through her eyelids. She felt mentally twitchy, unable to cease or slow for even a second as everything around her seemed to prod her mind, vying for her attention.

Was this how Epictus operated constantly? It hadn't been this bad back when she was with him. How did he do it? What had he said back in his clearing? Ignore it? But how? It was so overwhelming and distracting that the instinct to take it all in at once was nigh unbeatable.

How was she supposed to make her journey while fighting through all this feedback?

She heard a twig break nearby and her eyes twitched open. Ventas stood beside a tree before her. He was holding his bow and the divine’s lantern, staring at her with an odd expression on his face. This might have annoyed Birdie. Though she tended to act aloof, she really didn't like it when civilians stared at her. But she couldn't be upset, because she was too busy being distracted by the aura swirling around him.

The light-or lack thereof- that gathered on Ventas was distinctly bizarre compared to the rest that clustered around the world. Instead of the deep blue haze, he stood out like a splotch of squid ink on the beach. Ventas's form was shrouded in a thick tar-like black, which diffused to green around the edges. The patch of darkness did the opposite of shine- almost like it was absorbing the light around it and eating it up entirely, and then emitting that green glow as a byproduct. Was this how all elves looked?

She squinted at him in confusion, blinking back the press of information she had no way of interpreting.

Ventas shifted uncomfortably, and through the strange aura she saw his face turning a subtle pink as he scowled and walked passed her towards the path.

Realizing that she was the one staring now, she shook her head to regain focus, and peered down at her own hands. Immediately she wished she hadn’t. Blinding aqua white coated her, burning temporary little streaks of light into her vision that stuck around when she squeezed them shut.

Birdie took a few breaths and stole herself. She refused to be the one to stall their mission, and she knew that the longer it took for her to get it together, the longer she was stranding her friends in a potentially dire situation.

She got to her feet as steadily as she could and mustered her resolve. She’d just have to figure it out as she went along. It couldn't be that hard? Right? Epictus did it every day, and she was his Harbinger now- a "person with her hand in the well", as he put it. She just needed to get used to it.

“You okay?” Ventas asked, his doubt punching a hole through her focus and sending her mind reeling.

“I’m fine.” she shot back, not intending to be as sharp as she was but still annoyed.

“Did you get all of your things?”

“Yeah,” Ventas responded shortly, stepping aside so she could take the lead. She wasn't sure why, but the gesture annoyed her. Sure, she would probably be even more angry I'd he'd tried to step up, but just his mere presence felt like a distraction.

I'd probably be used to it by now if he wasn't here, she thought incorrectly.

But still. She wasn't going to let him see her falter. Birdie discovered that if she closed her eyes partially and let her lashes block most of the way before, that looking where she was going felt slightly better. The light didn't seem so bright. But as she faltered forward, she struck her toe against a root and went careening forward, flailing her arms to stop herself from falling.

“Woah!”

Ventas grabbed at her, catching her by the shoulder and ceasing her forward momentum before she could fall. Rather than feeling appreciative, Birdie flinched, yanking herself away after she got her footing and her cheeks burned hot.

“I’m fine!”

“Never said you weren’t!” Ventasa disputed, holding his hands up in mock defense. The strange green and black aura undulated and flowed with him like some sort of goopy flame, and he it's bipedal wick.

Birdie huffed and marched forward, but had to stop again when lights began to swirl before her vision. She squeezed her eyes shut and heard Ventas stop short behind her.

Don't say anything. Don't say anything.

"If you're having trouble-"

"I said I'm fine!" Birdie marched forward but stopped a third time when she felt an uncomfortable prickle running up the back of her neck. She turned on the spot, already supremely on edge and ready to snap at Ventas for whatever he was doing, when she caught sight of the Hunter and stopped short in awe.

Ventas stood still. Hiis black and green aura still swirled around him, but near the top the color split, and a splotch of white streaking shine streamed out of where his right eye should have been. It covered the upper side of his face and stood in etched stillness against the flow of the rest of his aura.

"What the-"

The cool mocking voice of Epictus cut her off, resounding inside her head and making both her and Ventas jump.

"Come now Birdie, you're not even three steps out of my domain and you're already causing problems."

Ventas slapped a hand over his eye and doubled over.

"Stop that!" He hollered, kneading at his eye with his hand.

"No! I told Birdie I would make sure she got the guidance she needed, and here I am. Now straighten up and listen. This is important."

Ventas stood upright with a begrudging grumble, staring resolutely at the roots beside Birdie's feet instead of at her.

"Now," Epictus began, his buzzing voice grating against her skull. Ventas pressed both of his fingers into his ears with a grimace.

"You're probably really overwhelmed right now. So if you're going to make it through this

you need to learn your first skill as someone with access to a well."

"A Harbinger?" She corrected, secretly desperate for his help but unwilling to let that small victory go.

"Right, yes, a that. Anyways, as you've probably noticed, there is quite a lot of power all around you at the moment."

"It's really distracting." She complained as if it were Epictus who put it all there.

"Well on the bright side, it won't always be this concentrated. The further you get from me, and other divine dominions, the less power you will notice. So most of your journey won't look like this."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"That's still not helpful. My goal is to get into another domain. How can I focus when I can hardly see?"

"Delegate it to another sense," Epictus supplied the answer as if it was the stupidest and most simple solution to any question in the world. As if Birdie had just asked what two plus two equaled.

"I take it you're not following."

"I'm following!"

"I don't think she's following," Ventas murmured.

"Shut-"

"Birdie," Epictus cut her off, "focus! Please. Okay? Right now, you are seeing the power around you. You need to make a conscious effort to switch faculties. You can change how it presents itself to you."

"So like, hearing it?"

"That is an option, yes. But I do not recommend it unless you want to end up like Lilfrik the hollow, and he was a real pain to deal with after the voices drove him mad."

"Okay, got it." She refused to take the bait to ask.

"So no hearing. What else then?"

"For now, I am going to teach you how to delegate your power sense to taste."

"Taste?" Birdie asked, suddenly unnerved with a mental image of herself walking around with tongues all over her face.

"It's tamer than you think. At the moment, taste will be the least invasive of the senses for your power sense to inhabit. I can teach you how to delegate to more practical ones later, but for now we need you at your sharpest- can't have you running around distracted tonight."

"Fine." Birdie prompted impatiently.

"Teach me how to do it."

"Birdie, take a knee,"

"Alright."

"Good. Now stick your tongue out."

"What?"

"Don't argue! We literally don't have time."

Birdie did as she was told, sticking her tongue out and feeling like a dumb little frog on a lily pad.

"Now kindly listen up, because this is going to take some effort."

Ventas followed Epictus’s instructions and fetched a small stone from a crumbling boulder nearby. He placed it in one of Birdie's waiting hands, and stepped back facing her like a bashful celestial cyclops.

"Now put that on your tongue."

Birdie made a sound in protest, and Epictus tutted in reproach. Ventas, looking irate, snatched the rock from Birdie who held it as if it were a stink bug. He rubbed the little pebble on the shoulder of his short sleeved shirt and pressed it back into her hand.

"There, it's clean. Now can we please get on with this?"

Birdie glared at him, and then placed the little Rock tentatively on her tongue, which was drying out in the cool evening air. She didn't know what she had been expecting. No taste of power or buzz greeted the contact. She couldn't taste anything, it was just a rock, but she could still see the vague blueish shine that hung around its rough surface.

Funny. Even a pebble this small had traces of magic. She'd been literally walking all over it her entire life. All this time, all she had wanted was power, and here it was, lingering in even the oppressively small and insignificant dross around her.

"It is an interesting thought isn't it?" Epictus mused.

"The irony isn't lost on me at least. Anyways. Focusing. Right. Now Birdie, I want you to mentally isolate your tongue. Pretend it is an island amidst a vast and empty sea. It sits alone as the sole landing point. Got that in your mind's eye?"

She heard Ventas give a quiet snort, but she ignored it.

"Yes." She said thickly around her outstretched tongue.

She could practically see it. Her familiar ocean, but with a strange pinkish rock jutting out like a mountain in a child's drawing. She became acutely more aware of how dry and cold it was getting.

"Good! Now keep your mouth shut, but focus on pulling all of the light around you to that island. And repeat the words I'm about to tell you. Okay?"

She nodded, a small corner of her mind not currently preoccupied with her tongue island, was secretly excited. This was her first bit of magic. True magic. The silliness of it all didn't diminish the significance of the occasion, but she secretly wished it could have been something more noteworthy. Like opening the gate, or using fire like Ammi.

She also secretly wished Ventas wasn't here. That irony was not lost on her either.

To his credit, he had stopped giggling and was currently looking up at the boughs above, feigning poorly that he was disinterested though he kept glancing down at her rock as if waiting for it to grow legs and take a jog around her tongue.

"Focus Birdie." Epictus scolded.

Right.

She breathed deeply, imagining the lights streaking to her outstretched tongue, leaving their places dark and normal and instead pooling around the glowing pebble perched upon the solitary island.

"Good. Now recite in your mind these words:"

Epictus recited a foreign phrase that had a lot of rolling consonants and short clips of sound. The words meant nothing to Birdie, much like the other cantrips she read in the spell books she borrowed from the Champions. Nevertheless, she repeated them dutifully in her head, and then once more for good measure.

A burst of sensation flared on her tongue. The tasteless pressure where the rock sat suddenly felt hot- not in temperature but in spice, as if she had just bit into a radish. It was curious at first, but quickly turned overwhelming and she instinctively let the pebble drop, pulling her tongue into her mouth where the prickling taste diffused.

"Ah!" She held her stinging mouth and her eyes flew open as she looked to Ventas’s shining eye in fear.

But instead of the churning mass of dark and green, she saw only the elf standing over her. She looked to the divine's eye and saw that the blinding light was also gone. Replaced instead was an eye that resembled a perfect match for Epictus’s, as if the divine had swapped them out. It looked unnerving in contrast to Ventas’s normal one, which still looked away in awkward disinterest, the perfectly normal pinprick stars above reflected in his dark iris.

"That looks so weird." Birdie remarked, her tongue still in her cheek as the spicy taste subsided.

"It's the best I could come up with on a time crunch okay?" Epictus buzzed defensively.

"Is it going to stay that way?" She asked, getting to her feet she stepped close and peered into Ventas’s divine eye, scrutinizing the dull lingering shine of the white pupil.

"Stay what way?" Ventas asked, reaching up to touch his right eye in a panic. "What did you do?"

"Nothing!" Epicfus reassured poorly.

"Well, I did something. But it's not permanent! It will go away when I disconnect. More importantly, how do you feel, Birdie? Better?"

"Yeah," she nodded, taking in for the first time the perfectly ordinary woods that surrounded them. The shine of magic was gone as if it had never been there in the first place.

"Now don't go licking everything you see," Epictus warned cheekily.

"Would I taste more power?" As she spoke, she registered that the air she breathed was no longer plane and indistinct. She could taste it. As clearly as you can taste bread when you walk into a kitchen when someone is baking, and simultaneously as unpleasant as it is when you enter a room after a man who refuses to acknowledge that they might have an intolerance had eaten that same bread (Cedar was smart, but in equal measures stubborn.)

"Euuugh," Birdie closed her mouth and grimaced, unable to decide if the lingering taste was good or horrible, as so many mixed within her that it all combined to a dubious tang.

"Yeah, until you reach the forest edge you might want to keep your mouth shut. But once we handle the situation down at the wall you really ought to try licking a tree, the right species can be really pleasant."

The wall.

Birdie felt a pang of guilt stick into her as she realized that they had already wasted so much time.

"We need to go," Ventas supplied nervously, apparently also snapping to his senses.

He reached into a pocket on his belt and withdrew a long thick cord, which he threaded through one end of the longbow he held in his hand.

"You're not going to shoot anyone," Birdie warned, half asking, half demanding.

Ventas shot her a sideways glance with his creepy mismatched eyes and stepped through the string, pulling the unstrung end of his bow over his shoulder and using his body to leverage it close to the cord until he could thread it into place.

"I won't shoot anyone as long as we are not in danger."

"We won't be."

"We don't know that."

"If you shoot Gabriel I'll-"

"Now kids!" Epictus interrupted, "We don't have time to get into your sorted and divisive past! Get down to that wall and protect my champions- and the rest of the city if you can."

"Can you leave?" Ventas asked in annoyed abruptness. He clapped a hand over his right divine eye and stalked forward, evidently over giving her the lead.

She followed after him in confusion, wondering what had gotten into him.

When Birdie had known Ventas, and she had known Ventas briefly many years ago, he had been timid and subdued. She knew perfectly well that a lot can change about a person in ten years- Gabriel was proof of that. But the elf hiking away through the darkness didn't seem like that meek and sneaky little boy from the Hunters chapel at all. Had the divine somehow changed him? And how had the two met anyway?

As the two hiked swiftly towards the city, Birdie’s mind buzzed, with both power and questions. Questions about the looming task, questions about the fate of her oldest friend, and questions about the boy who was quickly leaving her in the dust as he lept deftly over root and stone.

Why did it have to be him? Of all people?