Chapter 7 — Farewell

Felix’s hulking form was obscured only by the thick foliage just within the treeline. He and Rína kept low, even though there was half a kilometer of fallow fields between them and the town. Thick clouds threatening snow had blown over, denying the landscape any moonlight. The only light came from the faint glow of guards’ lanterns dotted around the palisade.

It was only two days ago that Rína fled across this same stretch of ground, and some of the same terror she felt that night was rising to the surface. She took a steadying breath and now, with the luxury of not being chased, tried to recall the nearby terrain. Felix, meanwhile, had his eyes locked on the guard posts in the distance.

“Hmm, there should be a stream somewhere around here. If we stick to it, we could keep low and—”

Felix, as if responding to an unheard cue, bolted out of the underbrush.

Rína struggled between the urge to shout a protest and keep quiet. Ultimately the latter won out as Felix sprinted across the empty fields to the town. Just as during their run through the forest, he made almost no noise as he crossed the distance. And as he neared the town’s palisade, he slowed and the noise level dropped even further.

In less than a minute, the two were pressed against the outer wall, far away from any guardpost.

“Show off,” Rína whispered.

Felix gingerly pressed his forepaws against the palisade as he rose up on his hind legs. The wall was just over five meters tall and with Rína still latched to Felix’s back, the two were just able to peek over the top. Seeing the coast was clear, Rina clambered over onto the wall’s walkway.

“I’ll be as fast as I can. Wait for me at the treeline.”

Felix grouched, then backed up, and with a small running start, leaped clear over the palisade. He landed low to the ground, in the canine equivalent of a crouch, his paws only making low thumps against the ground.

“What the hells,” Rína hissed from the walkway, “You’re going to get us caught.”

Felix softly whined, as he fully laid down.

“Ugh, fine,” Rína said, then sat on the walkway and dropped down from it, her short fall and landing somehow making more noise than Felix’s.

The two began making their way through the sleeping town; indeed, it was more than an hour after sunset and the streets were empty. The rare house that sported any lights in its windows were given wide berths. Rína led the way on foot with Felix following behind her. Not hearing him following, she would on occasion check behind to see if he had wandered off. But no, he would be right behind her, so low to the ground as to practically be crawling.

Twice, Felix nudged her, before darting into a space between two houses. After getting over the startle, she followed after him and soon after heard faint footsteps coming from where they were. Other nighttime travelers avoided, Rína and Felix arrived at the Andreou apothecary without issue.

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Rína, for perhaps the last time, found herself creeping through the back shelves of the Andreou apothecary. The thought had occurred to her to wake the family to say her goodbyes in person, or to at least wake Master and Mrs. Andreou, but the possibility that they might try to stop her—or worse yet, turn her in—had nagged at the back of her mind. Not that they could, at least not with Felix waiting just outside the apothecary’s backdoor, but the thought of them trying was worth avoiding the possibility all on its own.

And so Rína made her way to the desk where Master Andreou managed the finances of his small business, and more importantly kept a store of ink and paper. Going by memory, her hands found a match and candle from a nearby shelf and only once she came upon the desk did she light the two.

Pretentiously swirled script was the first thing her eyes saw after adjusting to the sudden light. It was upon a letter laying open on the desk, and without even reading it, Rína knew it was an ‘official notice’ from the magister. With sufficient curiosity and time to spare, Rína read the letter in full.

The script traded legibility for the airs of regality, making it at times difficult to actually read, but the overall content was clear enough. The notice was sent out to all of the businesses of the town informing them that following the O’Sullivan family’s act of arson two nights prior, the entire family’s assets were being seized as punishment and that any ongoing agreements the family had with any businesses of Leighton were hereby annulled and unenforceable.

“Well, shit…” Rína stared at the notice, reading it a second and third time. The O’Sullivans were Veronica’s family. They were wealthy, relative to the rest of Leighton, but it didn’t make sense to peg the blame on them.

Her mind went back to that night. Right after she had set her fuse there was a commotion at the manor that made her think she had been caught. But, in light of the notice before her, Rína could only imagine that maybe Veronica’s family had caused that commotion in her defense, perhaps after Rína had left.

It seemed more likely the more Rína thought about it, but that only put a sour taste in her mouth. Even if their support of Veronica was late by several years, Rína couldn’t stomach the idea that they were now being targeted because of it. The fact that it was because of something Rína had done factored into it, but by the sounds of it, her arson sounded more like an excuse to seize their assets than an actually commensurate punishment.

And that there was no doubt the family’s assets would end up in the magister’s own pocket was to Rína the ultimate insult. She had worked and risked so much just for it all to turn to shit. And worst of all, there was nothing Rína could do about, well, almost nothing.

She was already writing a farewell letter, she might as well have it double as a confession. Given the motives involved, Rína doubted a confession would actually manage to reverse the O’Sullivans’ seizure, but it was better than nothing.

The words came easy to her, especially as most of the letter was just a retelling of what she had done. But once that part was done, she had the difficult task of saying goodbye. The Andreous may not have been family, but Master Andreou had taken her in and taught her, even as both he and she received flak for the idea of a girl learning the craft. She expected to be able to go on for paragraphs, but when the words finally came to her, they were short and hopefully sweet.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

…

And Master and Mrs. Andreou. Thank you. For everything.

I’ll be leaving the region soon, off to greener pastures, hopefully. And don’t worry, I’ll be traveling with this pair of friends I ran into, I might even become one of their apprentices, fingers crossed. They’re a bit odd, but I get the feeling they’re good people. So…

So long,

Ríoghnach

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The wild man bound only in muscle and a loin cloth… would draw too much attention.

The lost child clutching their toy… would never be let out of their sight.

The steadfast… census taker… wouldn’t be believed, and would probably be thrown out.

The benevolent… witch named… Zvette… had run out of ideas surprisingly fast, and reusing faces was simply asking for trouble. The villagers so far had painted a decent picture of the current state of the outside world, and visiting any more would most likely be a waste of time. Plus each village came with its own host of social pleasantries that had to be navigated.

The diligent courier shuddered at the thought as they departed the village in the pre-dawn light. They decided to leave the cart where they stashed it as they started into a jog towards the forest. As their muscles warmed, and far from prying eyes, they let their jog turn into a pleasant run, then a casual dash, and finally a leisurely, kilometer-eating, death sprint.

The diligent courier—

“Oh. Right.” Yvette said, shaking her head in self-admonishment.

She turned her attention away from the physical, and towards the astral—towards the seemingly infinite thread structures she had built off her soul. The threads were so impossibly thin as to nearly not exist at all. There were countless of them that spread across the forest, but she ignored these, instead focusing on the shorter ones that she used for own body. With her will, she grabbed an inconsequential myriad of these soul threads and directed them to hair follicles across her body. There, each of the threads were further directed to and actuated individual nerves of her own design, nerves not connected to any larger nervous system, but instead designed only to be actuated in this specific way. The actuated nerves set her follicles in motion, drawing in and breaking down the courier’s chestnut hair, or at least the chestnut coating on her usual pitch black hair.

Meanwhile, Yvette sent more myriads of threads across her body. In her irises, her chromatic cells were actuated, with all of the blue cells fully contracting, the red cells dilating to a third of their full size, and the green cells dilating to a sixth. The result was her eyes snapping from the courier’s blue to her own more comfortable dark brown.

Beneath the skin of her face, custom chondrocyte cells broke down a temporary cartilage matrix, dissolving the courier’s masculine facial features and returning to her her own more comfortable face.

At strategic spots within her pelvis—at least what she called a pelvis for lack of a better word—marrow cells were ordered to plasticize their surrounding bone. The once rigid bone turned into flexible hinges, allowing muscles to widen her pelvis before the bone was re-solidified. Yvette similarly narrowed her shoulders and made a number of other small tweaks to her endoskeleton.

Within a minute, the chestnut coloring had been fully absorbed beneath her skin. As it finished, Yvette sent another signal and her scalp follicles seemingly unspooled her more comfortable pitch black hair, with the occasional strand of gray.

With a quick redistribution of fat stores, Yvette finally returned to her more comfortable and distinctly female form—thankfully, due to clothing and performative modesty, Yvette never had to go through the hassle of perfectly replicating a male exterior.

Yvette bounded over small streams and large fallen logs, eating up the kilometers under her feet, as she reached up and began tying her newly unfurled hair into a bun. She was back to her normal self. She still wore the courier outfit and pack she had thrown together—the costume now rather ill-fitting—but she would just change when she arrived home.

The transformation did create a non-negligible amount of waste heat, and coupled with her running, each of her relaxed breaths would have created a heat haze if she had been standing still—her heat sink lungs working just as she had designed them to.

With nothing left to do, she let her mind wander.

Finding a new home would be difficult. Yvette doubted all of the Seric Highlands would be turned into farmland, but finding a new pocket of wilderness that for certain wouldn’t attract colonization may not be feasible. Yvette could sabotage a large tract of land, turn it into a kind of wasteland settlers would avoid. There was merit to that idea, though even if the land wasn’t already inhabited, a wasteland in the Seric Highlands would be an anatopism that might draw attention in its own right.

That left descending from the highlands or crossing the leyline that separated the Seric Peninsula from the rest of the continent, either way meant dense aether would be in her future. If it was just Yvette and Felix, the travel would at least not be a concern, but with Rína coming with them…

An apprentice… Yvette had considered taking one on before, but the usual dangers had stayed her hand—better the precocious youths had regular, albeit mortal, lives hurling fireballs or the like. Still… It would be a while until Yvette would be able to resettle and resume her work. And Rína seemed to already have a mind for chemistry. And Yvette would be lying if she said that the girl’s company hadn’t quickly grown on her. Felix, for all his companionship, was a rather poor conversationalist.

Scenario one: the three of them stay together briefly—perhaps a decade at most—before Yvette and Felix leave the girl in some city with enough money in her pocket to get her started. Then it would be back to Yvette trying and failing to get Felix to actually use the gods damned vocal cords she had built for him. Yvette didn’t mind the solitude, not counting Felix, but she’d forgotten how nice it was to have someone to banter with.

Scenario two: Yvette takes Rína on, and assuming Yvette could keep her from dying, or worse, Yvette’s craft would have one more practitioner. And it would be a practitioner that wasn’t raised and educated in a damnable leviathan.

Yvette shuddered as she drew closer to home.

She would also finally have someone to talk shop with, to bounce ideas off of, at least once Rína had a grasp of the basics. Apprenticeship was looking more enticing, but due diligence still demanded that Yvette make at least one precaution before accepting her as an apprentice…

A plan was forming in Yvette’s mind as she arrived home, only an hour after sunrise. She opened the front door to find Felix sprawled asleep on his couch with Rína cuddled against him.

Yvette smiled. It was good to see that her plan of getting Rína more comfortable around Felix had worked. Yvette hadn’t missed the times the poor girl looked at Felix as if he were going to eat her—Felix certainly had to work on his first impressions.

Through her threads, Yvette’s attention descended towards the countless chambers beneath her home. It was unfortunate that she’d have to halt so many tests early, but there was no helping it. She took stock of how much work it would take to shut everything down and dust her tracks. It was daunting, but this place being discovered even after she had left would be nearly as disastrous as she herself being found.

All of that work would have to wait though. For two nights now, her guest, and maybe future apprentice, had been sleeping on the couch, and that was simply unacceptable. Rína could have simply borrowed Yvette’s bed, it had been ages since Yvette had actually slept, but on principle, a guest required a guest room.

Yvette focused on the threads that were already embedded in the living wood of her home.

“Hmm, a door here would be as good a place as any,” Yvette murmured, considering an empty patch of wall. With the barest of creaks and wooden groans, the wall gave way.