Chapter Forty-Three

Fourth Impressions

“Hand me a strawberry, will you?” Michael said, swinging his legs over the lip of the cave.

He looked out upon the stronghold. Its high walls. Its swivelling ballistae. It watchful soldiers. In the golden light of dawn, it would’ve seemed like a painting if the bronze veins in the walls weren’t glowing. “Really somethin’, isn’t it?”

Carter nodded and sipped his drink. “And now we finally have somewhere decent to sit and look at it!” He smiled to himself then raised his cup behind his head, tilted it toward the darkness and yelled, “Cheers, jackass!”

Michael and James both swatted him and threw various small fruits until he collapsed into laughter on the picnic blanket.

The boys sat there until sunrise had fully passesd. They watched the soft glow of dawn as it rolled up onto the faraway hills to the east. They ate and drank, spoke softly and laughed easily. It felt rather as though they’d hardly spent any time away from each other at all. In fact, were it not for the peculiar setting, they could’ve been sitting on the roof of the abandoned Istol watchtower in the corner of Dim-Side, looking out over the entire city.

They spoke of much, though not everything. It wasn’t the time for everything. It was the time for old friends, and drinking songs, and fresh, buttered bread. Amidst one particularly pitched bout of laughter, Michael felt his worry slip away. More than anything, the prospect of Nikereus and their army being forced to listen to their giggling only made him chuckle more. So he did.

The three young men worked their way through the two bottles they’d brought with them and eventually they fumbled around onto the conversation of Arcancy, though this time slightly drunk. By then, James was slumped back, napping on the cave floor in a tipsy slumber.

Michael blinked heavily and held out his hand in front of him as light spurred through his veins and rose up through his palm. “So... what can’t I do?”

Carter chuckled and shrugged unevenly. “Only limit is your... um...” he tapped his head and made spacey, unclear patterns with his hands.

“Insanity,” Michael guessed confidently.

“No, but almost.”

“Faith?”

Carter shook his head while drinking from the bottle which ended predictably.

“Oh! Oh! Imaging- imagin-imagination!” Michael stammered, loudly

“That’s it!”

Michael waved him off. “That’s the same thing.”

Carter pulled out one of his silver daggers and balanced it rather skillfully on his finger. The veins in his hand came alight with a grey glow and suddenly the teetering blade froze in its position. Then with little preamble, it rolled completely around Carter’s finger at the pace of a snail, disobeying every natural law Michael knew of.

“There’s spritzes of iron dust in this, so I can manipulate it. Spritzes. That’s a funny word,” Carter snorted.

“Spritzes.”

“Spritzes.”:

“Spreetzees.”

“-But I could do almost anything which I know is related to the idea, I think. Like, um, like...” Carter fumbled but couldn’t find the words.

On a hunch, Michael held out his own hand and the light which floated above his palm began to shift and move like a glob of water before it thinned and stretched into vaguely the same shape as Carter’ dagger. “Like this?”

Carter’s drunken eyes blinked slowly as he said, “That is crazy! Can I have it?”

Michael snorted from the mere look of childlike enthusiasm and said, “Sure.” But the moment his fingers touched the light, it snapped off and left both drunk boys cackling in the low light of dawn. “Shit, hold on let me try again.”

Carter nudged him. “Maybe you could do that with arrows. Solve your quiver problem?”

Michael scratched his head and let his hands fall back into his lap. He didn’t relish the idea of burning veins every time he needed to shoot an arrow, nor was he even certain he could to do it. The light-knife alone didn’t even seem to want to interact with him. “Just imagination, huh?”

Carter nodded and rested his head onto Michael’s shoulder. “Should be easy enough for you, I think.”

Michael leant back onto his elbows and felt his smile slowly fade back into his face. Before he knew it, he was looking at James. He knew he shouldn’t ask. If James wanted him to know, he would’ve told him. But his mind was thick with liquor and his heart was sore with the time apart they’d suffered.

“So, what’s the story here, then?” Michael jerked his head softly toward James, not using his name so as not to wake him.

Carter’s drunkenness seemed to soften and he sat himself up a bit more surely. “You might not believe this, but I actually don’t know myself.”

Michael stared at him. “You’re right, I don’t believe you.”

Carter smiled, and for a moment it was his normal, charming grin. And then between blinks, it wasn’t. It changed behind his eyes. It was rueful and worried and sour from how long the same question had plagued him.

Michael saw the regret in his face and touched Carter’s hand softly. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” Carter asked, the smile still there.

“He’s your oldest friend. It’s hard.”

Carter looked over at James. His broad frame lying stiffly on the stones, but not uncomfortably. “All I ever got out of him was that… he blames himself- that he did something bad with it. He said that after a night of sorrow-drinking. Remember the Thallinaday party last cycle? Yeah, after that.”

Michael rubbed his face and realised he needed to shave. “Trouble is that James always compares himself to Thall even when he isn’t guilty of a damn thing.”

“Tell me about it. But… I don’t think this is the same.” Carter nearly lifted the bottle again but he sighed instead, leaving it. “I think- I don’t know. I just want him to be okay.”

After a moment of quiet, Michael found himself staring at the keep in particular and a thought occurred to him. “How about Amekot. Is he a Legacy?”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Carter breathed delicately in his drunken state. “Mmhmm. He has an odd Arcancy, so I’ve heard, though I’ve never outright been told what it is. Apparently, he served in the Imperial Army in the Conscription War, made Captain or something. I think that’s why they let him take command when the old fortmaster died.”

Michael could almost have guessed. “Of course, he served the imperials.”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Prick,” Michael huffed.

“Funnily enough, I heard around the bonfire that Jack was a rebel. Probably explains why they don’t get along too fondly.”

Michael frowned and did some drunken math before shaking his head. “I heard that too, but he’s what, like thirty-somethin’? He can’t have been younger than us when he was a rebel. After all, that war ended like sixteen cycles ago.”

“It’s just what I heard. He’s got enough scars to convince me, though.”

Eventually the two boys woke James up and they ambled back down the hill.

The day was almost completely anew as Carter lined himself up to take the leap back across the moat.

He took a deep, sobering breath and threw himself toward the stone gangplank. Carter deliberately undercut the jump and caught the edge of stone by his hands. Unlike the soil-side of the moat, the rock-bridge was too narrow for a messy landing. He pulled himself up onto the platform, complaining about his upper-body strength, and waved James onward.

James took a minute to be sure he wasn’t going to fall asleep mid-leap, and quite easily made the distance, catching the platform by his hands.

Michael made sure he was wary of the mud around his feet and started off at a slow run, building up to the speed he needed and threw himself carefully at the stone slab.

Too carefully.

It was only when his weight came forward that Michael found he was quite a touch drunker than he’d realised and that he wasn’t reacting anywhere close to fast enough.

His fingers hit the front edge of the stone bridge and scrapped off.

For a long moment, Michael felt confused as he looked up toward his friends screaming and shouting, but he couldn’t seem to hear them as he fell. It seemed his mind had decided to stop using any sense which wasn’t about to be necessary.

Michael slammed into the moat below and his entire body sank beneath the weight of the black, oil-like sludge. He thrashed and kicked but every single movement was like moving through tar and within one breath, Michael’s head slipped under the surface and he was blind by the darkness. The muck was freezing, far colder than anything under the morning sun should’ve been. He held his breath for as long as his burning lungs would allow. He clawed at his throat, begging it not to take a breath but he couldn’t fight it and his mouth gulped a full lungful of the dark essence.

All things went black.

*****

Somewhere a woman’s voice was yelling. It seemed to fade in an out as Michael’s hearing became less and less clogged.

“-ing idiots...he... ld’ve drowned... totally and com... irresponsible!”

Light roared back into Michael’s eyes as he spitted up a gallon of the dark liquid, rolling onto his stomach, coughing and retching.

For a moment Michael didn’t know where he was. He tasted mud. Something was tied around his waist, lightly restricting his movements.

Carter and James both grabbed him by the arms and checked him all over. James cleaned the muck off of his face and held him close. “Are you okay?”

Michael coughed a few more times and nodded. He looked around to find he’d been dragged up onto inner lip of the moat.

James frowned deeply as Michael’s lost face seemed to wander. “Carter, get Lillian.”

Michael grabbed Carter before he could leave and shook his head quietly. The vertigo of DeJa’Vu was swamping him but before long he had breathed through it. “That jump is harder than it looks. Who was that yelling? Sidney?”

James pursed his lips and shook his head, nodding to Michael’s waist.

Michael looked down to see a grapevine twisted and knotted along his arms and below his ribs, like a floral harness. It snaked along the ground and he followed it all the way up the battlements towering above to see Rose clambering back over in a huff, still shaking her head of wavy blonde hair.

Carter swept back his hair and looked over Michael’s slicked-up state. “I think maybe you should go first. I know Sidney has an earful waiting for us and personally, I didn’t fall so-”

James smacked him, only to then add, “He is right.”

Michael nodded, though he was thinking very little at all about Sidney Selene.

*****

Michael jogged through the courtyard as morning rolled into full swing, leaving Carter and James behind. The Legacies who saw him chuckled and pointed as muck sloughed off him while he ran.. He zipped down the main hallway of the keep and realised he had no idea which way to go.

At the same moment, Sarah came ambling out of the Archangel wing and saw him. “Michael?- did you fall in the moat! Ha!” She covered her mouth in laughter and started to wheeze. “I’m sorry."

Michael rolled his eyes and asked, “Do you know which cabin Rose is in?”

Sarah looked idly surprised as she wiped the tears from her eyes. She nodded back the way she’d come. “She’s an Archangel, in Rosébuin Chamber. Second floor.”

Michael thanked her and took off down the Archangel corridor as Sarah laughingly yelled, “A bath might be a good idea!” but he waved her off.

For the most part, the Archangel wing was mirrored with the Paladin wing, separated only by two slight differences; one being artwork and the second, in general, it seemed slightly more open. Cabin doors were left ajar. People read or sang or strummed music in the halls. Younger Legacies played as their older counterparts practiced their Arcancies or did weapon exercises. It was as though all the socially comfortable Legacies had found their way to the same side of the fortress.

Michael darted up the circling ramp and made his way to the second floor to find that Rosébuin was the first cabin along that floor. He reached out to knock before realising he had no remote clue as to what he was going to say.

Michael stood there for a long second. “Well, ‘Screw it’ seems to be today’s theme,” he muttered and drummed on the door anyway.

The entire face of the door shimmered yellow.

Michael froze, his hand still aloft.

“You have to say a person’s name,” said an Archangel passing by. “If it’s not your cabin, it won’t open to you unless you’re requesting to see someone.”

Michael stammered out, “Thank you!” and turned back to the door. He took in a breath to speak Rose’s name when the door was pulled open, scaring the daylights out of him as he leapt backward.

In the open space stood Rose watching him get himself under control.

“When you knock and don’t say a name it alerts the entire chamber, you know?”

Michael ruffled his hair and said, “Oh, that make sense.”

Her icy blue eyes looked him over for a long moment, waiting for him to speak.

Michael opened his mouth to apologise for everything but he felt that the word had rather lost its meaning. He took a breath and realised for the first time just how covered in muck he was from the moat. Part of the vine was still wrapped around his wrist.

Rose raised her brow, still waiting.

“I just wanted to… thank you.”

She blinked, taken aback. “Oh.”

“-for, you know, saving my life-” he continued.

“Sure.”

“-and not punching me when I nearly blinded you-”

“I wanted to.”

“-and for not being madder when I spilt your food-”

“Quite the walk down memory lane, this.”

“-all things which would have been fair...” Michael raked his hair back nervously.

Rose looked at her feet and then back to him.

Michael intertwined his fingers and then looked back to her. “Is there anything I could do to... make it up to you?”

A smile curled onto Rose’s face. “Sure.” And drew a wand from her belt.

Michael frowned and was busy asking, “I thought you had a bowstaff?” when Rose held the magical weapon up to his face and a bright red flash, accompanied by a cork-popping sound resounded throughout the corridor and a wave of concussive energy bowled him to floor.

Michael groaned and opened his eyes to see the cabin door closing as Rose and her cabin mates laugh uproariously. He then tilted his gaze down to see that pink rose petals completely covered him head-to-toe and that every inch of the moat sludge had vanished.

Eventually he made his way back toward the stairs to find his friends, just as confused about Rose as he’d been before.

As Michael entered the stairwell, Rose opened the door to her cabin just a fraction and watched him leave, scratching his head. She chuckled and leant against the door frame.

“You’re welcome, Michael,” she said quietly.