Lady Lorelai had two girl twins
With lovely eyes and snow-white skin
Played the same games, wore the same clothes
Shared the same bed, spoke the same words
The ten children in Sparrow Park
Could hardly tell the two apart
Same lovely smile, same snow-white skin,
Until one twin started rottin’
Are you the one? Are you the one
Who goes to Lady Lorelai?
Lady Lorelai had two girl twins
With lovely eyes and snow-white skin
Played the same games, wore the same clothes
Shared the same bed, spoke the same words
The nine children in Sparrow Park...
—Lorelai’s Twins, nursery rhyme
-
Remembrance 2, 2497 AK, Radiant Empire, Cleft Isles, Greyport.
Nausea stabbed acid nails into Sarmin’s insides. The soiled rag in his mouth tasted like mould and old sweat, teasing his last meal up his throat. The lack of air spun his head round, and his arms were twisted at an awkward angle by the teen holding him. With each lumbering step, his captor’s shoulder dug painfully into Sarmin’s stomach as the group jogged deeper through the unevenly paved, meandering backstreets of dank, cold and dark Greyport.
The Half-Elf prided himself on knowing the city’s layout inside and out, but even he had hopelessly lost his way in the darkness. His kidnappers had taken too many twists and turns, as if worried they were being followed. Sarmin hoped their fears came true. Kay…
His consciousness was starting to fail him by the time the group finally slowed. He heard the groaning of an old door, and the cool silver moonlight was replaced by the fleeting, flickering orange glow of a candle flame. The starry sky vault became a high, shadowy ceiling teeming with crisscrossed timber and groaning wooden shapes.
His captor roughly tossed Sarmin down on the floor, snapping him awake. He reacted instantly. Years of enduring Kaydence’s abuse had trained his instincts, and the Half-Elf was moving before his conscious mind registered it. As soon as his hands were freed, he yanked the gag from his throat and leapt to his feet, his eyes searching desperately for the door. He nearly vomited from vertigo but swallowed it with a wet cough and took a deep breath.
“H-HELP–”
His ankles were kicked from under him. He dropped to the floor. A boot dug viciously into his side, cutting off his cry for help. Stunned, Sarmin heard more than he felt his rib crack, and he curled around his aching side with a whimper, shielding his head with his thin arms, dreading the next blow. Splinters pricked his cheek, which pressed against the moulded, creaking floorboards scattered with rotten straw. A faint biting draught seeped between the planks, blowing a briny, fishy smell onto his face.
Large fingers scraped against Sarmin’s scalp, then roughly gripped his hair and twisted his head up, straining his neck. The Half-Elf found himself face-to-face with Thomas Burtin.
A flame hovered above the bully’s open palm, flickering weakly in the fishy draught, and casting waving shadows across Thomas’s round, bloated face. His cheeks were ruddy with intoxication, and his black eye looked even more swollen than the last time Sarmin had seen him. A malevolent sneer distorted the twelve-year-old’s ugly face into a demonic mask.
“Welcome… to our hideout, tree licker,” the boy slurred drunkenly, clenching his free hand, which was crudely wrapped in blood-soaked bandages. “No one… No one will find you here.”
Thomas’s bloodied fist slammed into Sarmin’s face. Pain exploded from his nose, and the darkness that had been encroaching upon his vision surged forth, rapidly swallowing all until nothing remained but a silent plea.
Kay… Help me…
* * *
A dark figure leapt between Greyport’s rooftops, swiftly dashing towards the harbour. With shadows wrapped around her like a protective blanket, Kaydence appeared as little more than an ominous silhouette against the black starry sky.
The Shadow Cloak spell erased sight, sounds, and even her magical presence, on top of looking intimidating for the rare cases she had to interact with people. From Kaydence’s point of view, it was a coarse, pathetic little cantrip, plagued with too many drawbacks and an inexcusable weakness against targeted magic scrutiny. But it sufficed to fool any inattentive mages or clueless mundanes, and her current self dared not dabble in any spell too potent or complex.
The path to power was too slippery a slope for her to trust herself to tread it ever again.
One more leap delivered the cloaked girl atop one of the many brothels bordering the Split. Crouching at the edge of the roof, she peered at the people wandering the street below in the gleam of red-hued lanterns. The activity in the pleasure district was less than in recent days. Most local patrons and foreign visitors had flocked to the Festival grounds tonight. Yet, many still longed for the warmth of another body over that of a sanctified bonfire.
No one noticed the shadow jumping down the roof, across the street, and into the precipice.
Kaydence eschewed the snaking path that led past her home. She scaled the cliff in a straight line down, creeping along the uneven stone with the agility of a surefooted lizard, dropping yards at a time and catching herself briefly on asperities where sleeping seagulls nested. Her fast and quiet descent never even disturbed the slumbering birds, nor was it discovered by the listless city guards patrolling the docks below.
Descending so fast towards the stagnant Death-touched waters in the depths of the Split made Kaydence’s soul scar ache, but she brushed it aside and soon reached the pier. Calm waves lapped at the old wooden supports of the jetty, trapped between the rock walls. Viewed from down here in the dark of the night, the Split appeared at once looming and oppressively tight, like a stone jaw ready to snap shut at any moment.
The bobbing light of a lantern approaching, along with loud creaking footsteps, Kaydence slid soundlessly across the old wet planks and snuck below the pier. Quiet as the grave, she waited amidst support pillars and crossbeams for the guard to walk above her. Inwardly, she was cursing the algae and barnacles impeding her grip. Luckily, the tide was low enough that she was not half-submerged.
Once the guard moved away, Kaydence started crawling upside down below the pier towards the Split’s mouth. Edon, the information broker, had mentioned a shipment of drugs sailing in from the mainland, and only small local fishing boats moored inside the canyon proper—too narrow for the larger ocean-faring ships. Unfortunately, the Festival had attracted too many merchant vessels for Kaydence to check each and every one.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The black waters turned wilder once she exited into the broader oceanfront. Outside the Split, the narrow dock expanded, spreading multiple piers throughout the bay like the tentacles of an angular octopus. Froth and sea spray erupted from the wave’s incessant assault on the cliffs. This thin mist was quick to dampen Kaydence’s clothes, enabling the winter cold to sink its icy claws deeper into her flesh and bones. The slippery plants, shells and oozes encrusted in the supports multiplied, and displeased crustaceans waved their pincers warningly at the shadow invading their domain before skittering off into more secluded corners.
Some of the oozes were livelier than Kaydence would have liked.
Despite the discomfort, Kaydence crept along, balanced between the wet, barnacled beams, freezing every time a guard walked above her. From the shadows, she peered at every ship, trying to pick a first target.
Some vessels had guards of their own—not from the city, but independent mercenaries hired by the merchants, whom Kaydence preferred to avoid if possible. Instead of beating homeless drunks and malnourished purse snatchers, these people were used to fighting off pirates and sea monsters. Miserly merchants who employed amateurs rarely lasted long on the ocean.
Therefore, she had to swallow a curse when her instincts pointed her towards one of the better-guarded ships in the harbour. Of course… She sighed.
At least, Elusive Mer was not the best-defended ship in the harbour. Nor was this brigantine the biggest or the smallest ship around, neither the newest nor the oldest. It moored about halfway down the pier, between a large galleon and a different two-masted, and its colours belonged to none of the prominent merchant guilds Kaydence recognised. In fact, the ship was unremarkable in almost every single way.
Naturally, Kaydence found it highly suspicious.
However, what concerned her most were the guards themselves. The average-looking men, wearing average-looking equipment, patrolled the average-looking ship with metronomic precision. Their routes never deviated. They never exchanged words when crossing paths, much less drink or gamble together like others on neighbouring ships. The galleon’s crew was especially loud. This level of discipline was offputting for such a run-of-the-mill vessel, and Kaydence could only suspect something unnatural was afoot.
Without a sound, she skulked towards the ship, keeping to the damp shadows below the docks. One man guarded the gangway shipside. He was of middling height, with short-cropped black hair, dark eyes, a rugged, unassuming face, and a honeyed skin tone typical of the empire’s central lands. He wore thick winter clothes, complete with gloves and a high woollen collar—not unexpected in this cold. But the way he stood to attention, rigid, inordinately static and alert, a hand resting on the pommel of the cutlass hanging at his waist, rang alarm bells in Kaydence’s mind.
Her doubts were rapidly morphing into certainty. Scratching a support beam, she broke off a thin splinter, then flicked it forcefully at the man’s exposed face. The imperceptible shard flew unerringly and pierced the sentinel’s left cheek.
Kaydence was ready to retreat the moment she threw the splinter. But as she expected, the man showed no reaction, not even a grunt to acknowledge the pain. He kept staring at the access to the ship with fixed, vacant eyes.
Kaydence clicked her tongue and ducked back behind the beam. Of course, these random scumbags have undead guards. Why wouldn’t they? That was sarcastic. There were too many reasons to count why animated corpses made for poor sentinels. Firstly, the mana and skill required to raise undead minions capable of complex tasks were resources usually better spent elsewhere. Just keeping the bodies rot-free alone was a mana efficiency nightmare. And that was before even considering the public backlash.
Necromancy was, strictly speaking, not banned in the Radiant Empire. Still, its practitioners were viewed with extreme distrust by the general populace. It was the reason why incineration had become the nearly exclusive way to dispose of bodies in these lands.
Besides, desecrating corpses was very much illegal, and Kaydence doubted the bodies used for those undead soldiers had been ethically sourced.
What rotten luck. Morality issues aside, Kaydence’s most pressing concern was the undead’s innate sensitivity to Life and Darkness magic. Her shadow cloak would not fool them if one spotted her, mindless corpse or not. Ah, that’s funny. When has my luck ever been good?
On the flip side, she was now relatively confident this was the drug-smuggling ship she was looking for.
Kaydence had never gotten her hand on the so-called Ruby Dust. The last time the drug circulated in Greyport had been at the very start of “Wraith’s” collaboration with Edon, when she had still been reluctant to involve herself too deeply. However, the effects she had observed back then—enhanced strength, desensitisation to pain, murderous insanity—had always appeared too severe to be mundane. In many uncomfortable ways, they reminded her far too much of her own forays into necromancy.
This seemed too much of a coincidence.
Reconsidering her initial plan to infiltrate from the top deck, Kaydence crept further beneath the pier, heading towards the stern. There, a row of small windows lined the back of the ship. Leaping off a support beam, she landed quietly against the hull and grasped the nearest windowsill. Peering through the glass, she saw a dark room bathed in moonlight: the captain’s quarters. No one was in sight.
Runes were carved inside the window frame. Kaydence recognised a defensive enchantment, currently dormant. The captain likely had to manually activate it in case of an attack, as maintaining any large-scale magic permanently was an enormous drain on resources, requiring either a mage on standby or a steady supply of managems or monster cores. Greyport could afford to maintain its Grand Ward only because the city sat atop a prominent ley line—one of the many pathways of power that flowed underground like rivers of raw aether. Many believed these ley lines to be the veins of Shu, the Godly Element of Earth, whose body became the ground of the world.
After checking the windows and finding them locked, Kaydence sighed and summoned her magic. Darkness-attuned mana rose through her cloak in thin, purplish threads, which she shaped into a circle of spinning runes. Her casting this time was meticulous, making her fairly confident nothing should detect her. Soon, a small orb of darkness formed on the closest window next to its handle.
Then she punched through the glass.
It shattered soundlessly. Kaydence let the spell dissipate, reached in through the hole, and turned the handle. The window opened with the faintest groan, inaudible over the ship’s creaking. It was a tight fit, but she managed to squeeze through by dislocating her shoulder.
Then she was inside.
Never use a spell where a good punch gets the job done. Kaydence nodded to herself, popping her bone back in place. Not a popular opinion in the magic community, unfortunately. Even in the past, she had been appalled by how mages neglected their physical abilities and stuck to the rear in battle. But since Seifer’s best counterargument had been a sword through the neck, few of his peers had the chance to heed his advice—aside from his direct subordinates.
And Seifer’s older brother.
Of course, that bastard was so effortlessly good at everything that it’s really not praiseworthy.
The captain’s quarters of the Elusive Mer were sparsely furnished, with little more than a hammock, a desk, a chair, and a handful of cabinets. Kaydence stepped around the broken glass on the floor and went straight for the desk. Her aim was the cargo logs. Obviously, nothing illegal would be listed explicitly, but smugglers typically mixed contraband with regular merchandise. All of it would be offloaded together and stored in the same place, usually a private warehouse or store, where it would then be separated. Those private addresses were what she was after.
The logs were not on the desk or in any of its drawers. A quick search of the cabinets yielded no result either. However, Kaydence eventually located a safe, hidden in the fake back pannel of a cupboard. The compact metal cube had a matte black finish and golden filigrees, with a sculpted rotary dial on its front. How needlessly fancy, she sneered. It looked pricy, definitely Dwarven-made, although the flourish appealed to Human sensibilities. Just by brushing her hand against it, she felt several security enchantments embedded inside. It seemed overkill to store mere shipping records, but Kaydence had looked everywhere else, and she did not want to waste any more time.
The enchanted combination safe would have stumped most thieves. So sad to see all that money go to waste. Kaydence would have struggled more to open a regular key-locked chest—discreetly, anyway. She crouched in front of the box and summoned her Darkness mana once again. She was using too much of it, but seeing the undead soldiers outside had annoyed her more than she cared to admit. Corpses? Cute. Let me show you how it’s done, kid.
The tendrils of her purple mana started to align in her most complex spell of the evening yet.
At its core, necromancy was the mimicry of life. All living things possessed instincts and thoughts, and the aether—or mana, as it was now known—responded to this inherent will. This was the most fundamental nature of magic. Even subconscious intent influenced ambient mana, leaving traces for those who knew how to find them.
Necromancers used Darkness magic to extract those echoes and employed them as a framework to craft a simulacrum, or “shade,” out of Life Magic, which they then infused with more Darkness mana. This shade could be implanted into any compatible receptacle to create a so-called “undead” tool. Corpses were the stereotypical receptacle, as dead bodies contained high concentrations of life echoes, conveniently allowing the necromancer to conjure the shade directly within its perfect host.
But convenient was all it was. Cheap, lazy and obvious, was what Kaydence called it.
Her Darkness spell took shape in front of the safe, never actually touching it, thus avoiding triggering its defences. Once she felt it latch onto something, she called upon her Life magic to shape the dark mana into a simulacrum. Her first spell collapsed in on itself, forming the shade of a man’s hand. The shadow limb brushed against the safe’s dial, twitching.
Beneath her cloak, a subconscious, vicious grin curved Kaydence’s lips. She reached for the safe, allowing her shadow cloak to peel back off her forearm, and superposed her own hand through the unstable shade. With another flex of her will, she activated the last part of the spell. The hand shade was sucked into Kaydence’s own limb.
The sensation was deeply unpleasant. Necromancy was not meant to manipulate the living, and the forceful integration of a foreign will inside her body felt like ants crawling through her veins, compelling her hand to move against her desires. Grimacing, she stopped resisting and touched the safe. Moved by a force of habit not her own, her hand turned the dial back and forth. A heartbeat later, the safe unlocked with a satisfying click, the lock also disarming the magical safeties. She let the spell dissipate and shook her hand to rid her fingers of the horrible sensation.
Inside, somewhat surprisingly, she did find the cargo logs she was after, along with a purse of mundane precious gems, which she unceremoniously pocketed. At this point, her break-in was unlikely to go unnoticed, and she would rather have the crew chalk it up to petty greed. She felt no remorse for robbing her fellow unscrupulous necromancers.
Kaydence quickly checked the logs. The last entry indicated an address along the Split, not far upwards from the pleasure district. This felt somewhat anticlimactic, but not all unlawful nightly escapades ended with a life-threatening fight against the undead.
In fact, Kaydence generally preferred it this way.
With a shrug, she went to put the logs back, when she spotted an unassuming black ring at the very back of the safe. Her heartbeat hastened, and she wondered how she had missed it before. Now that her awareness was on it, the power inside the ring called out to her in a harrowingly familiar way. Dropping the logs in the safe, she retrieved the tiny artefact and rolled it between her trembling fingers.
Her crimson eyes latched onto the sharp-edged rose carved into the ebony stone. The colour had chipped off it after millennia, but in her mind, she still saw the ornament hued in glistening blood red.
…Rina?
Why was an item belonging to one of Seifer’s old companions on this random ship?
* * * * *