I shove the predator away with a barking laugh. Ay, there’s the rub. Let you take control? Not fucking likely. How about you just lend me your abilities? Or, better yet, I can just take them from you.
The predator growls. I can take its powers, yes, but I can’t wield them like it can. I have already seen that. I need it. I should let it take control.
I shudder in disgust. Fuck off with that. I’m not going to let you take control. And for emphasis, just so it knows how serious I am, I press my mind against its, forcing it to feel my revulsion, my resentment, my resolve. The predator flattens beneath the pressure of my mind, for a moment its presence dissolving away entirely as its identity is overridden by my own.
I pull back just as quick. It’s not that I feel bad for it, but realizing I’m doing to it what it did to me makes me feel… I don’t know what, exactly. Unnerved, maybe. I should be better than it. I am better.
As the predator’s mind extracts itself from me, its arrogance and mockery has simmered down into a familiar hatred once more.
But while our minds had merged, there was something else I’d gleaned from the predator. A realization that I could wield its powers without letting it take control; as long as it’s not completely suppressed, I’d still have its knowledge—its magical muscle memory—to pull from. I’m not thrilled by the idea, but…
The predator isn’t thrilled by it either. It has no desire to help.
This is the best deal you’re going to get, I say. I’m not letting you take over. And if I take over completely, then I suppress your abilities along with your mind. If you want even the tiniest drop of control in this situation, then you can choose to work with me.
It’s not really an offer, and both of us know it. If it doesn’t willingly lend me its power, then I can make it do so. I’d much rather it be the former, and in any other situation I might be horrified by the way I am blithely stripping away the autonomy of a thinking creature, but if I’m being honest, I’m not totally convinced this murderous void monster deserves any personal liberties.
The predator hesitates. It doesn’t want to share its power, it wants complete control. But it also doesn’t want its will to get overridden. Reluctantly, angrily, it agrees.
Honestly, I’m not sure I wanted it to.
This time when the predator reaches for the void, I let it take hold, but I extend my reach into the magic as well. Our wills overlap within the void. The tether between our minds shortens with the contact, so short it’s almost as if there’s no barrier at all. I can feel the predator’s manipulation of the null arcana as clearly as if I’m doing it myself. It pushes the void out, and the range limit I’d run into before now falls away as if there’d been no barrier at all. I focus on Zyneth as our minds fall into lockstep.
We weave the void across the floor, keeping it to the shadows of tables and chairs that lattice the floor. The inky blob darts between feet and spirals around table legs, avoiding detection with fluid ease, made easier by the fact that we seem to be able to see, hear, and feel directly through the magic. We are still seeing through our core—our anchor—as well, so we cover that with a thin film of void, tucking the glass within our shadows and darkening its vision, so we can focus just on the movements of the void. Much better.
As the void swirls across the floor, we marvel at how trivial it is for us to control it.
Of course it’s easy—it’s an extension of ourselves.
Well, an extension of part of us.
The part that matters.
Oh, fuck off.
We make it to the cambion—Zyneth—quickly enough, but his back is turned, anxiously tapping a finger on the table. Even from this distance, we can feel the heat of powerful magic burning within his soul. It’s a pity we didn’t end up with a more capable host like him.
Just shut up and focus already.
We move up the leg of the table, spilling the void over the surface of the desk. We try to keep it flat to avoid detection from others, and to Zyneth’s merit, his only indication of surprise is hastily jerking his hand back.
“That better be you, Kanin,” he mutters. Sparks of electricity dance over his fingers. “If not…”
Belatedly we realize one thing both halves of us have in common: We can’t spell. Not in his language, at any rate, and not well enough to get the point across. Instead, we change the void into an arrow, pointing back in the direction of the door.
Zyneth leans back, rubbing his neck, and casually casts a glance in that direction. “I don’t see anything. What is it?”
We’ll have to get him to follow. We spill the void off the edge of the desk and onto the floor, maintaining the arrow pointing back toward our core.
He hesitates a moment longer, nodding back to our glass shell, still inanimate and propped in its chair. It looks so much like a puppet with cut strings. A prop, not a body. Not our body.
“Is it in range? Can you move it?” the cambion asks. “It’s too heavy for me.”
No. Our glass is still out of range. We have to keep the door from closing.
His question gone unanswered, Zyneth is forced to follow as we weave him back toward the wall. He’s remarkably good at not watching us as he follows, somehow managing to make it look like he intended to head in that direction from the start. We pull our void back into the rest of us, and he stops a few feet away.
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“I don’t understand,” he says under his breath, turning to feign interest in a nearby shelf. “Where did you go?”
There must be an illusion covering the entrance. We’ll just have to risk being more blatant. Snapping a tendril of void back out the door, we grab Zyneth’s wrist, tugging him toward the entrance. We feel the muscles in his arm tense beneath our grasp, instinctively resisting our pull—he’s much stronger than our pathetic supply of void. We miss being powerful. Though the rest of us isn’t far. Stuck in a pocket of Between called… an inventory? Interesting. It wouldn’t take much effort to retrieve it, either. All we need to do is reach for it—
Nope! No. That’s it. We’re done doing this.
We pry ourselves apart, like peeling off an old bandaid. We try to resist, we aren’t willing to relinquish our control, we don’t want to lose our hold on the void, yet, but—
The predator reels as I shove it from my mind, then slinks away in resentful defeat. It takes a moment for my own mind to adjust, the disorientation of shifting from the shared consciousness to just me as dizzying as it is relieving.
Yikes. That was too close. I don’t intend to repeat that experience anytime soon. But I don’t have time to sit and stew in the consequences of what we—what I just did. I have to get Zyneth inside.
I’m still holding his arm with a strand of the void, though instead of an extension of myself, my current hold on the magic feels clumsy and juvenile. At least he’s within range, and tugging him toward the gap in the wall is something even I can manage without void monster assistance.
After a moment of hesitation, he allows himself to be guided to the wall. I pull his hand toward the door’s frame. His fingers brush against the door, then he runs his hand along the seam. I let go as he feels out the shape of the door and wall. With one quick backward glance, he steps inside.
“Ah,” Zyneth says, looking around his new surroundings. “Clever illusion magic, that. Though your instructions were rather…” He looks down at me and blinks. “That is somewhat unsettling.”
What? Oh. I let go of the door handle and retract that tentacle of void back into the main volume, which hovers around me like an inky jellyfish. It sort of developed other tentacles all on its own, like the one I’d used to grab Zyneth’s hand. I pull all the limbs in to reduce the Noli aesthetic.
“At least now I know where all that void ended up,” Zyneth says. “The bottle tipped itself over and broke on the edge of the fountain—the predator was gone before I could even react. Though I see now you’ve gotten that under control.” There’s a lift to his voice, like it’s more of a question than a statement.
“Yes,” I sign. “It’s under control.”
Zyneth squints at the signs, but he at least seems to understand the “yes” part. “It will be tricky sneaking through this place while watching your signs,” he says. “I should go back and get your translator. Actually, you should retrieve your whole body if you can. Leaving it out there is suspicious—and I suspect we will be needing every tool at our disposal for this job.”
He’s right, but we have more pressing matters. The spider sentry could return any second, and I don’t have enough glass to shield Zyneth, too.
“We have to be careful, there’s spider sentries here,” I sign as he furrows his brows at my words. Shit, how do I say this with the most basic signs possible. “Careful. Spider find us.” I form my signing glass into the best approximation of a spider I can manage and send it skittering across the floor. Between the signs and my helpful demonstration, he seems to catch on.
“Those spider sentries like in the rest of the library?” he asks.
“Yes.”
Zyneth grins. “Then we have nothing to worry about.” He grabs the door, effortlessly pulling it open a few more inches. The same door I had painstakingly dragged open. It just isn’t fair.
“Go on,” he says. “I’ve got this. See if you can retrieve your body without drawing too much attention.”
I don’t appreciate the insinuation that I will be drawing at least some amount of attention no matter what.
“You sure?” I ask, hesitating a moment longer. Not that there’s much I could do against the sentry.
Zyneth pools lightning in his free hand, twitching his fingers as if knitting the strands of electricity together. “Have more faith in me than that, won’t you?”
I do. Deciding I’ve already wasted enough time, I scurry out the door and across the library floor.
It’s strange, having just made this trip minutes before through the eyes of the void. The predator is still sulking in the back of my mind after having its attempt to access my inventory thwarted. I’m going to have to keep my eye on it. At least I know it won’t be able to pull the rest of itself from my inventory without our minds being merged. So as long as we don’t do that again, I should be fine. And I certainly don’t plan on working with the predator again, no matter how useful its control over the void is.
As I cross the floor, I nervously Check the predator stats, just in case.
[Predator Time Limit: 10.5 hours]
[Predator Influence: 5%]
No change. Good.
I can feel the glass of my body the moment it passes back within my range, but I don’t try moving it until I’m close enough to add my void to all its joints. And now that the predator’s void is mixed in with my own, I’ve got a lot more of it. Before I was only able to brace the legs and back, but now there’s enough for the rest of the body as well. Little bits of shadow tucked into every nook and cranny.
I reach down to pick up my core, slipping it back into the necklace pouch as I switch my vision over to my head. And just like that, I’m pretending to be a person again.
A couple people glance my way as I head back over to the wall—the door and opening completely invisible, now that I’m on the outside. I spend a painstaking minute browsing the shelves, waiting for people to glance away or get bored of my unusual presence. Finally, there’s an opening, and I use it to step up against the wall, sending my signing glass ahead to feel for the crack. Once I’ve located it, I slip back through.
Zyneth is not quite where I’d left him. The door is pulled all the way inward now, and he’s keeping it propped with his foot. In one hand is a spider sentry, legs twitching angrily within a cage of yellow light. His other hand is crooked over the device, lines of electricity zapping between the construct and his fingers like one of those toy plasma balls. He’s frowning in concentration, the tip of his tongue poking out the side of his mouth.
The sight fills me with a warm affection. I balk, the feelings catching me off guard, and I quickly stamp them out.
What am I thinking? I can’t start catching feelings for Zyneth, not when I’m planning to leave this world behind. That’s a recipe for disaster. Developing a crush on someone now won’t lead to anything good. I have to stay focused.
Flustered, I clear my throat, which the translator interprets as a kind of garbled coughing sound. Zyneth doesn’t look up until the remainder of the spell finishes pouring into the spider, whose magic has changed colors to reflect Zyneth’s electricity.
“There we are,” he says, setting the construct down. It scurries across the floor and up the wall, back to one of the many white lines of silk that crisscross the ceiling.
“What did you do?” I ask, speaking through the translator.
Zyneth steps away from the door, allowing it to close. “I gave it new instructions. It should notify us whenever other sentries grow near, and try to head them off. Should buy us enough time to hide, at least.”
“I did not know you could do that,” I say. Pretty useful. And for a reason I can’t quite place, a little unsettling.
“I’m an artificer,” Zyneth says, patting the knives at his waist. “Imbuing objects with spells is what I do.”
Ah, that’s why it bothers me. Because according to his magic, I’m an object, too.
“Come,” Zyneth says. “Let’s get moving.”
I try to push disquieting thoughts of the predator, Zyneth’s magic, and my troublesome feelings away. Right now, I have a mission to focus on, and if I don’t want to get caught by Yedzaquib how that sentry just got caught by Zyneth, I’ll need to keep my wits about me.
“This way,” I say as I lead us down into the spider’s lair.