“But you said I couldn’t make you be my friend,” said Niall.
True friendship could only exist between people who wanted it. But they both could benefit from continued interaction, Niall needed someone for stability, and Casimir could do with both having someone to save and having someone in the Academy who owed favors to him.
“I meant you can’t force someone to be your friend.” Casimir said, extending his hand for the other boy to shake. “Would you like to be my friend?”
Niall shook his with both hands.
Alliance Created!
Alright. I need to stop doing things until I figure out what is going on. Casimir thought.
The ruling powers hid their System’s secrets jealously. What little he did know came mostly from overhearing his father’s conversations with other wealthy heads of houses. Even then there was no guarantee of that holding much fact. Maksim had never held the System and neither had his father’s little coalition of important families, the so-called Consortium. That Casimir had resorted to enlisting the help of cultists was proof enough that he was on his own.
It seemed mere fantasy to assume Barasa was whispering into his mind at key moments with another voice but that left the question of who was. Was someone watching his actions through the system or was the voice a mindless response to a set trigger? Could someone track his movements or even his thoughts through invisible connections?
“Wh-what are you thinking about?” Niall asked, waving a hand in front of Casimir’s face.
“The way that ignorance enslaves a man’s righteous judgment and slows his victories.”
“Has anyone ever told you that sometimes you talk funny?” Niall said.
“No.”
“Well, you do. Just thought you should know.”
“Noted, I suppose,” said Casimir.
“Is it a rich person thing or an Ascendancy thing?” Niall asked.
“Considering that I was anointed during the examination, just the first.”
“Wait, only today?” said Niall, mouth agape.
“Yeah.” Casimir whispered, rubbing his right eye tiredly. “It’s a long story.”
“I’m willing to listen as long as you need.”
“No, I’m tired. Another time.”
“Tomorrow?” Niall said excitedly.
Do I have to worry that any promises I do end up making will be binding? What does having an Alliance with him even do?
“Tomorrow, you go home. After that, perhaps.” Casimir said.
More than just his own fortunes guided him now. The tricky part was that he couldn’t see the path. He had wanted to enter the Academy for a reason. Despite all its problems and arrogance, it was both available to join and an open book when it came to its inner workings. Get in, study hard and impress the right people and you would be granted what you sought for.
And now?
Now, he did not know what to think. He had thrown himself headfirst into something that he did not understand. The Ascendancy was terrifying in its obscurity. Was it mankind’s government or its religious leaders or mankind’s anything at all? For a civil government, they certainly made and enforced very few laws that were unrelated to the gods but for a religious organization they did little preaching. Mostly they were unseen until they decided to remind everyone of their existence. With violence.
While Casimir found Niall a room, he continued to worry about his new fate. The path had been opened up but what grim detours he might be forced to follow seemed much more a grave concern than it had been in the heat of the moment. The consequences loomed large, whether they would end up crushing him depended mostly on which way they fell. That weight was coming down and it was leveling something, just not him if he was lucky.
“You’ll stay here.” Casimir said, opening a guest bedroom door.
“Hey, aren’t you worried about having a stranger left alone in your fancy house?” Niall asked, clearly still looking for a way to reorient his way into a sleepover. “You know, that I might steal something. Not that I would, but you know what I mean.”
“Not particularly.”
“Because I’m so cool?”
“Because not all of my family’s guards are visible. Sleep well, I will see you tomorrow.”
Not all are visible is an understatement, not all are even human. Casimir thought. He often had the sensation of being watched in his own home, but now the passive form of his Observation Skill was practically screaming at him. His eyes drifted to look at a painting of a distant Shuisky ancestor. Tsar Vasili IV Ivanovich Shuisky, last ruler of Russia before atomic fire rained down from the skies. Poked into the portrait’s eyes were small punctures and looking through those spyholes was a man waiting in a hidden passageway through the walls.
Which one are you, I wonder?
Identification request received! Please hold while your request is being processed.
Access Granted!
No information was found on Ascendancy databases for this individual’s identity.
So, the System didn’t know everything. That or maybe the level of access he had currently was not enough for it to do some real digging. So many questions. But now was the time to try and salvage something of the remaining hours. Would he be able to get any of them at all though? Casimir’s head throbbed but his heart rejoiced as he left Niall behind and stumbled to his own room. It was nearly upon him, the work of ten miserable years coming to fruition. A way to fix his sister, his first sister before his parents had decided to give birth to a replacement.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
That’s not fair. He thought to himself. Maybe about my parents, but not about Rina. She’s more than that, even if that’s the reason they made her.
But he was close now and that was all that mattered. Casimir climbed into bed, pulling glowspider-silk sheets around himself like a luxurious cocoon.
And then maybe Ekaterina will forgive me.
Sleep would not steal him away to blissful dreams though. It rarely did anymore. Luckily, he had found other ways of inducing slumber, taken from the valuable teachings of his mother. Casimir slipped out of bed, setting his feet on the cold ground and crept to his closet. On hands and knees, he pawed aside shoes to search for a hole in the floorboards. He hooked a finger in, moved the loose board up, and pulled a glass bottle free. The top popped off with a few twists and the liquid burned on the way down his throat. One learned to like it, he supposed. Casimir replaced it and returned to bed, shutting his eyes. Wishing for pleasant dreams but knowing they would not come.
He dreamed of a doorway in the basement, one that led to other places. Little worlds. Impossible spaces, realms of wonder. And horror. He dreamed of playing in those living fantasies as a child, making up games with a girl, her laughing. And then—
“Don’t leave me here, Caz!”
In the waking world, Casimir screamed back to awareness. The hot sweat stuck his shirt to his chest, so he peeled it off to let a rush of cool air wash over his skin. Almost a shock, but not quite.
I’ve got to quit this crap.
An odd pattern with drinking. It helped you fall asleep, but it rarely kept you there. Sooner or later, you woke up. Same difference to Casimir. If he woke from nightmares or woke from alcohol messing with his sleep cycle, it was what it was. At least it helped him sleep in the first place, he reasoned. At any rate, his mother had managed to use it for quite a few years, and she was still alive so it was not like it would kill him.
Staring up at the ceiling, he wished for sleep. Should he pour a proper cup? No, that would blow through my rationing schedule too fast. He had it planned out pretty well by now, a rough calculation of how much he would need in the night and in the morning, and how to procure more from the family stores without suspicion. An extra amount here or there wouldn’t kill him or his supply stock, but it was the beginning of a bad pattern. He had had… slip ups before. Binges. That could burn through too much too fast. Could be life threatening even. Worse still, it could attract negative attention from his parents to his activities. They might take action if forced to.
There was a lot that could be hidden and even more that could be willfully ignored by Maksim and Anastasya Shuisky, but if it got to be the point that it became a public embarrassment or something that prevent Casimir from fulfilling his role as heir, they would cut him off.
And at this point I can’t go back. I can’t go back to being without it.
He had tried when he was fifteen. That had not gone so well. An understatement really. Dwarfed by the truth. Burning a metaphorical hole in the ceiling above with his eyes, Casimir tasted salt in his saliva.
He stretched out his arm into the air, blinking tired eyes, and rolled down the sleeve to look at his inside forearm. All of the numbers were marked as zero. His thumb traced the glowing lines. Funny how it felt burning to touch with his hand, but it wasn’t uncomfortable to bear on his arm. The supernatural was inherently a contradiction and these six numbers were the closest he had ever gotten to it. The amount was comforting. If there had to be limits to what could be measured in enhanced humans, six was good enough. Large enough to be imagined, yet too small to be incomprehensible or coming too close to perfect divinity.
Skill level up! Your Observation skill has gone up by one! For your continued passive usage of this tool, this skill has advanced.
Casimir’s heartbeat rocketed. How the hell would he ever know when or why the System would decide to thunder in his ear? Some questions got answers, some actions made things happen, but always unexpectedly. It was annoying. Yes, he would get responses from Barasa eventually. Yes, the Ascendancy would fill him in on a drip feed, he was sure. All of that did not change the simple fact that they would tell him only what they thought he needed to know.
That ‘need to know’ basis could give him everything he wished for or nothing at all and it would not be clear until he was headfirst submerged into the muck and mire of the Ascendancy’s secrets. To win Ekaterina’s freedom and safe health, he needed to do something bold. Find a way to understand the System more than he should as a young initiate into the order, discover what they wanted him to do, and game the situation so that no matter what he also managed a way to achieve his true goal.
He was not interested in power for power’s sake, nor in glory or honor or patriotism for mankind. This was all for his sister and for repentance of a past sin. Nothing else mattered. Everything else was worthless.
What about Rina?
Rina had to be looked after. She was not the original Ekaterina, but she was still his sibling. He should spend more time with her, it was true. Exhausted from thinking in endless loops more than the sleep deprivation or the physical exertion, Casimir drifted away once more without the needed for artificial help. This time he dreamed of nightmarish towers and citadels hidden away in the Spire, of endless arcane knowledge and dark intents.
Something grabbed him, and shook him, reality trembling. What was it? A god? A demon?
“Wake up!” Maksim Anderovich Shuisky said. He shook his son rapidly.
“What? What do you want?” Casimir said, blinking bloodshot eyes and wiping away the crust at his eyelids.
“What do I want?” His father said incredulously. “What do you think I want to know about, you stupid boy?”
Maksim grabbed his son’s right arm from under the covers to unveil the symbols.
“Oh, that.”
“Yes, that! Do you have any idea of what you’ve done?” Maksim said. He stabbed a finger into Casimir’s chest.
“I found a way around the Academy’s rules,” said Casimir.
“You bound yourself to the Ascendancy. Do you have the slightest concept of what those creatures are? They’re inhuman, no matter how their flesh and blood make them appear,” his father said.
“Well, at least they gave me a shot. I could never get past any of the Academy’s exams, it was like they were rigged against us.” Casimir said.
“You weren’t supposed to pass, that’s why I bribed the proctors each time you took it to find a way to fail you.” Maksim said.
“You… you did what?” Casimir said.
“In what world would I allow my heir to be swallowed up into bookstacks and foolishness? All for an impossible task too.” Maksim said.
“It isn’t impossible. It. Is. Not. Impossible. She’s your daughter, how could you not want to save her?” Casimir demanded.
“If it was feasible, I would have had it done already. The number of people with constant System access in university holdings can be counted with two hands. The number of users who actually know of anything related to human transmutation is zero,” Maksim said.
“I could have learned how to do it if they let me in, if you hadn’t paid them off. And now I can learn to do it,” said Casimir.
“No, the priesthood will devour you up. These people aren’t reasonable. Once someone is initiated, there is no going back.”
“He said that I have to return to him to get more.” Casimir said.
“Who said that? Do you know the name?” Maksim replied.
“Barasa.”
His father swore in the old tongue.
“This is awful,” Maksim said, pacing around the darkened room. He hadn’t even bothered to light a candle.
I wonder who it was that told him that I had been marked. Casimir thought.
“You don’t like him then.” Casimir guessed. Perhaps the priest had enacted some laws that had impacted the Shuisky family’s investments.
“It’s not a matter of liking or disliking the servants of the gods, it’s knowing that you’re in too deep to get out no matter what I do. You can’t buy the Ascendancy. You can’t threaten it either.” Maksim muttered, gripping the side of Casimir’s desk until his knuckles went white, his back hunched over.
“They could make me into what’s needed to save Ekaterina.” Casimir said.
“And if they were to destroy your soul in the process?”
“Then so be it.” Casimir replied without fear.
There was a glimmer of pride in his father’s eyes, before the man took a seat on the bed and put his head in his hands. There was stubble on his neck and cheeks, reddened eyes from too little sleep.
----------------------------------------
Casimir Maksimovich Shuisky
Stats: (Unallocated)
-STR:0
-VIT:0
-CHA:0
-PER:0
-FOR:0
-DEX:0
Skills:
-Observe Lvl 2
Traits: Shuisky Heir, Inverted Human
Allegiances: Shuisky Family, Cult of the Delving Wyrm, The Ascendancy
+10 Obedience Points for Allocation.