I told Liz that Martha rented a place out to us a few hours later as we discussed what we would do for the next few months until academy admittance.

“You’re fucking kidding right?” She said, shaking her head. I just looked at her, feeling meek. She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose, “Fine, whatever, we do need a place to stay. How big is it? I’ll probably need room for training.”

I shrugged, “Dunno, wanna head there today?”

“Sure.”

I pulled out my phone and inputted the address to get navigation there. It wasn’t too far, only about two blocks away.

As we walked Liz said something to me, “By the way. I think I can hazard a guess as to what type of inscription you have.”

“Huh?” I looked at her, pausing. She had my full attention.

“Well think about it, you had a sudden burst of paranoia, then that happened. I don’t have everything worked out but… remember Lia Vyn?”

“One of the Conduits?”

“Yeah, her. You ever see her fight? She almost never gets hit. She dodges most hits before they come, even those she shouldn’t be able to see. Like she knows it's coming. Like how you knew something was coming.”

“What, you think I’m a seer?” I scoffed.

“I didn’t say that. Could be though. Information on them tends to not to circulate much. Could still be perception. Or I’m off base and it is some type of meta-inscription,” she said and shrugged. “Unless you wanna get analyzed to see your realm inclinations, we’re just taking educated guesses.”

“We could run tests or something I guess?” I hadn’t really thought about my inscription since its activation.

Liz walked silently next to me, not responding. Then something weird happened. I felt something off about her stride a tale of a desperate, dangerous fighter coalesced in my mind. I felt my stomach drop, my heart start racing. A lump formed in my throat as it felt like I was struggling to breathe. Her body didn’t promise death, simply a large amount of pain.

Panicked, I took a half step away, pivoting towards her to see what was going on. As I did that, I narrowly avoided a punch that flew toward me.

“What the hells Liz? I just recovered from a concussion! Are you trying to kill me?!” I shouted.

She shrugged, “I was confident I was on the right track. I was. Don’t see the problem,” she said, shrugging.

“What kind of logic is that? Gods above Liz…”

“You’re fine dude. Besides, now you have an idea of what your passive manifestation is.”

I sighed. It wasn’t worth arguing with her when she was like this. Her reckless streak could be frustrating, especially when she thought she was right.

The worst part is she was often right. Liz’s hunches usually weren’t unfounded, so she developed a bit of an ego about it. I let it slide as we finally found the place.

The building we were sent to appeared to be an old rundown apartment complex. It wasn’t in the worst state but had wooden planks boarding up some of the lower floors. The outside was dirty and dingy. Its bricks took a dull, ugly brown that ran deeper the closer to street level you were. I actually remember this building now that I think about it.

Several years back Martha had me drive some girl here who was beaten black and blue. I never went upstairs, just escorted the girl inside and left. I had to come here a few other times too for various tasks. Sometimes other people would be around helping out. I was pretty sure Martha owned the place.

That gave me a moment's pause. Martha obviously had a lot of resources. I knew she smuggled goods in and out of Alza since it was a portside city, the one closest to Spindor. But besides that, she did have a lot of resources to mobilize inside the city and a level of connection that was somewhat concerning. A lot of the jobs I’ve done for her were definitely outside of the purview of a simple smuggler too. Either way, it was ultimately none of my business what she did outside of what jobs I was given.

Liz led the way, searching for the apartment number we were given. The first floor was messy and had seen a decent amount of foot traffic. There were needles, pizza boxes, and other things laying about. Liz raised an eyebrow as she walked past it looking for our room. Every room on the floor was in the hundreds so we went up the stairs. We made our way up to the fourth floor and found it—419.

We walked in. The door was unlocked and kicked up a decent amount of dust. There were some boxes scattered around.

“I guess we need to move these? Help me with that big one first,” Liz said, walking towards it.

“Could be worse,” I said, squatting down and helping Liz move the box.

“Yeah. Could be,” she responded, voice dull.

I sighed, “C’mon Liz, I know you’re angry but-”

“Don’t ‘C’mon Liz’ me, you know exactly why I’m pissed at you,” Liz interrupted.

“Is that why you tried taking my head off earlier?” I asked indignantly. She snorted.

“Trey, if I wanted to take your head off I would’ve, inscription or no inscription,” She said as we put the box down.

It was my turn to snort, “You were barely able to take me in a fight before I had it. If I can literally always tell the hit is coming I’m pretty sure I could take you down.” She just stared at me, disbelief etched onto her face.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Wait… you seriously think you could take me in a fight? You’re kidding right?” She asked, sounding like she might laugh or cry.

“Liz I’m like two weight classes above you, have at least a few inches of reach, and an inscription that counters your biggest advantage. You aren’t beating me in a fight unless I’m injured. Hells our last serious sparring match I was injured.”

At that point, she actually laughed, “You know what, you got that. I’m too tired to argue this right now. We can settle it later.”

“What’s there to settle? I’m pretty sure I’d at least be able to eke out a win nowadays.”

“You’re being argumentative because you’re upset I’m irritated at you, Trey. I’m not stupid and I’m not rising to your bait. Besides, I can always beat your ass another day, when I actually feel like it,” she said, a wry grin cracking on her face. Relieved, I cracked a smile.

“Like you beat Leo’s?”

“Oh dude fuck off. You know I didn’t lose that. He fucking came at me with 3 people and still went home limping.”

“And even with your mother’s insurance how long did it take to pay off your hospital bill?” She grimaced. “My point exactly,” I said laughing.

“Whatever. By the way, how long are we able to stay here?”

“I think at least until we do our exams? I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t actually ask her.” Liz gave me a non-plussed look.

“How much did it cost?” she followed up.

“Uhhh… I didn’t ask?” I responded again.

“Trey…” Liz pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed.

“Sorry. I know that’s something I should’ve checked. I just was worried about getting everything together for us to at least have somewhere safe to sleep and stuff.”

“Trey… I still fucking hate this y’know? You being under Martha’s thumb again.”

“I know,” I responded voice low.

“You worked so hard to get away from her. Or at least to change your relationship back into something that wasn’t indentured servitude. You sure about all this?”

“Yeah, I am Liz,” I said. “I did work hard to get from under her thumb but I’ve worked harder to get into Northridge. I’ve worked harder to see everything and everyone I care about in order and it feels like it's all slipping away from me. Liz, I don’t want to work for Martha again. I’m not blind to the shit she does. I’ve seen enough to know why her dickhead of a child can prance around like a fucking lord and no one checks him. She does fucked up shit, I’ve been there for plenty of it. But she’s the closest thing I’ve been given to a fair shot and damn do we need some fairness right about now.”

I watched as Liz studied my face, searching for something. She was quiet for what felt like an eternity. With bated breath, I waited for her to say something, anything. Finally, she let out a sigh. It was deep and rung with pure exhaustion.

“Fine. I appreciate the help Trey, I don’t want to seem ungrateful; I’m just worried about you. I bet if dad wakes up he’ll appreciate it too.”

“When,” I said, “When he wakes up.”

“Yeah,” Liz responded. “When,” she said as she pulled me in for a hug.

_____________________________________________________________

The next week passed in relative peace. I trained with Liz, usually from noon until the early evening.

Liz’s training was utter insanity.

I think she took what I said about being able to beat her in a fight personally as now she had me on her regiment. We ran—no, sprinted—until I thought I was going to vomit. Then were the situps, pushups, and other bodyweight exercises. Liz went to failure each time and I couldn’t keep up. I sat and watched one day, soaked in my own sweat as I watched her do handstand push-ups until her entire body was shaking from exertion. Then right when I thought she was going to collapse, she swapped to crunches and just kept going with endless drive. I could see the hunger in her eyes. There was a goal there, something I wasn’t privy to. Something she was driving herself to complete exhaustion for during her training.

I felt something stir inside me watching her. A combination of awe, a bit of jealousy, and deep-seated respect mixed inside me. I always knew Liz was driven. But she often undercut herself with humor and a relatively easy-going nature.

I found myself getting back up and pushing myself harder. I couldn’t keep up, sure, but her determination was infectious.

Besides training with Liz, I worked on my design blueprint for my artifice examination. I realized that I had a double-edged sword in my hand as I worked on some new revisions. I wasn’t limited to whatever resources I had on hand now. That wasn’t to say I had unlimited resources, but the intricacy of my design could be a lot higher since I was essentially designing this with funds on loan. That was the scary part. Martha already gave me her warning, I doubt she was going to twice if I got too greedy with what I wanted here, but I still felt an intoxicating bead of excitement at the opportunity I had here. It wasn’t like they took my project away from me afterward, I could design something impressive and massively useful for me. I could also work on some side projects in order to better defend myself both around town and within the bounds of the combat test I was planning on doing?

My thoughts froze as I realized I didn’t have to do the combat test anymore. I could do anything within the bounds of my skills and creativity with Martha’s resources. Should I do the more mundane tests alongside artifice? I thought about it. But something about it itched at me. A hunger I could feel, a desire to fly high, as high as possible. It was the feeling of freedom. It was fake, I knew that. If I focused, I could essentially see Martha’s shackles on me. The higher I flew using artifice, the heavier it’d be until I broke underneath it. But I could do more. I wouldn’t be the best fighter, I didn’t care for it enough. But if I could get in on dual honors at the least the doors that would open would be endless.

As the week came and went, I finally heard from Martha again, it was just a call. Apparently, she was busy. I thought it was about my payment, but it was actually something else. One of her healers visited Liz’s dad in the hospital. I felt a buzzing anticipation form in my stomach as my leg started bouncing.

Martha kept everything short, simple, and blunt. Apparently, Liz’s dad was in really really bad shape. Shattered bones all over, ruined ligaments, several cracked vertebrae, and a traumatic brain injury. If left to heal naturally, him waking up would be a miracle along the lines of a divine descent. Hells, after his treatment of him it was still middling chances of him waking up at all and still in the miracle range that he’d ever near the shape he was. Keeping it frank, it was likely he’d need a wheelchair assuming that when he wakes up he’s able to move at all. No matter what happened, he was going to need extensive rehab unless we somehow got the church or some other otherworldly healer to step in.

The call was exhausting, I felt a sickening knot twist around in my stomach at each new bit of information. Tears were welling up in my eyes towards the end. Gods above, I didn’t know how I was going to tell Liz. We knew things were bad. We visited him earlier this week and saw the full body cast. It wasn’t hard to guess things were rough, but… I don’t know, it was different to know how bad things are.

Martha hung up soon after leaving me with my thoughts. Liz was out right now, she often left in the evening and returned pretty late at night. I had started to notice now that we were living in the same room.

She came back a bit after 1 that night. I was sitting on the couch we had, listening to music, trying to drown out my thoughts. I didn’t notice she had come in until she plopped down on the sofa next to me. Realizing she was back had that tight feeling of nauseous rolling in me grow larger and tighter. I gritted back more tears as I took out one of my earbuds.

“Hey, Liz,” I said, voice cracking as I looked over at her. She looked exhausted but her exhaustion quickly turned to concern at how I sounded.

“What’s wrong Trey?” she asked, her voice obviously straining to stay even as she looked at me.

I couldn’t hold back my tears anymore as I answered, “It’s about your dad, it’s really bad.”