Ethi looked at the corpse, jaw lumpen and slack, eyes blank, laying in a puddle of their own blood. It used to be a person, a walking talking person with hopes and dreams, and then she’d killed him. It wasn’t her fault, he was going to kill someone, she had no choice. It had all made sense in her head, but that was when she was drunk.The magic had burned that away now, and all Ethi could think of was how she’d killed a man with it.“You need to get out of here,” Ethi jumped at the voice, thought it that of a male and found its source in the woman she’d saved. Her face was a canvas of cuts and bruises, some old, many fresh. Her eyes held a ferocity to them, like an animal, not predator; prey, and a cornered one at that. “You need to get far, far away from here,” It was the most she’d spoken since they’d met.

“I…”“You don’t understand what you’ve done.” She said, words cutting through Ethi’s like a rusted blade. Her voice cracked; fracturing into a million pieces. She sounded on the verge of tears, on the verge in general, really, with eyes darting around like the shadows themselves held blades and cudgels at the ready.

The woman was a barrel of black powder; Ethi would need to keep her dormant. “What have I done? Explain it to me.”

She demanded, keeping her voice low so as to not upset her. It didn’t work.

“You’ve fucked me is what you’ve done!” The woman growled, looked at her with renewed eyes. No longer was her gaze a thousand yards onwards, a fresh focus had bloomed in it, one that landed squarely on Ethi. “Why couldn't you have just let me die?” She asked, almost pleading.

Ethi took a half step away, already counting the heartbeats until she could touch her magic.

The woman reflected her backstep, and Ethi recognised why. In her eyes was the look of a dull who’d just realised they were threatening a mystic.

“I’m sorry,” She said, carefully.

“It’s okay,” Ethi replied, likewise.The woman nodded and pulled her eyes away from Ethi, finally deciding she wasn’t a threat, or at the very least not a pressing one. “You’re clearly not from around here, so I’ll make this quick,” She began suddenly, “The man you killed is the son of a notorious crime family, when word of this spreads they’ll do more than just kill you.”

Death wasn’t something Ethi considered often, but her current situation left room for little else. A sickness stirred in her stomach and fear threatened to cloud her mind. She thanked her family for giving her the gift to reign it in, even if she would never see them again, it was as versatile as a tool could get.

“What do I do?” She asked the stranger, and Ethi surprised herself with the calm in her voice.

It had a similar effect on the woman, for she took a moment to respond, but when she did it was with a look of pity. “I don’t know,” she said, and there was a grim finality to it. “I don’t know,” she repeated as if bracing herself for something. “I need to get out of here, figure out what I’m going to do next,” She began walking away.It took less than a moment for Ethi to realise that if she let the woman leave she would be as good as dead. She was in a strange land, with strange people and stood out like a sore thumb. She didn’t know anywhere she could hide or run to for safety.

“What are you going to do?” She asked, calling out.

The woman stopped and turned. “I… I don’t know, I’ll figure something out,” Her words stumbled out impatiently, clearly eager to have her feet moving again.That wasn’t good enough for Ethi, she needed an idea cemented in her head. “Take me with you.”

The woman must have been expecting the request with how she met it not a moment after it had left Ethi’s tongue.

“I can’t, you’re easy to spot, I’m sorry, thank you for everything, but I can’t go unnoticed with you.” Luckily for Ethi, she had been preparing for that response in turn.So you’re planning on hiding then, at least for a little bit.

“You can’t go unnoticed without me either,” Ethi riposted. “If these people are as deadly as you say, you won’t be able to hide for long, in fact the more time you give them to search, the more avenues are open to them. You’ll be caught soon, before you can hatch an escape plan.”

“And what’s your plan?” She asked, a nervousness to her voice.

“We get off the island, now, before word can reach all of them, before they can send everyone looking.” Ethi had no ties to Udrebam, the only question was whether or not the stranger’s were loose enough.

She didn’t take long to provide an answer.

“You have enough money for a ticket? Because I certainly can’t pay for a ship off of this dump,” there was hope in her eyes and Ethi hated having to crush it.

“I don’t.” She didn’t, she’d lost it all trying to forget.

Ethi had planned on gaining enough to get off of Udrebam through magic labour, but that had been when time wasn’t a commodity. .

Ethi had not thought liquor would be the end of her, but it seemed an unavoidable fate now.

“Then we can’t buy a ticket then,” she said, frowning as Ethi might have expected. “Shit,” The woman inhaled. “We need to sneak onto one.”

Ethi would have smiled were the thought of the dead man and meeting a similar end not still fresh in her mind. She let out a breath. “Thank you.”

The woman turned swiftly, and began moving quickly, just short of jogging. “We need to go get my cat.”

“Your cat?” Ethi asked, following behind.

“Yes, my fucking cat, now hurry up.”

***

The task of racing through the night while doing everything they could to avoid being spotted was not one that left much room for conversation. Cut was the woman’s name, or at least the name she had chosen to give Ethi.

That was about as much as she had managed to get from her, not the reason she was concerned with a cat of all things at this very moment, nor the reason she was being held at gunpoint by that man.

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Ethi herself had not done much to pursue any further dialogue, far too concerned with the more crucial issue of staying alive. She couldn’t use her magic to move them faster through the city, it caused her to glow brightly for one, and the pressure of magic in the air was a sure signifier of a mystic's presence. That would be exactly what they would be on the lookout for, and if they had even a single Manamicist it would be noticed a city-span away.Now, they were in the sewers. The place smelled liek…Well, fucking sewers, but it gave them both an opportunity to do something else beyond looking over their shoulders.

Ethi had noticed a few things about the woman that she could now chew on. The first was that she was a fighter. She carried herself like one, her brown hair was cut short so as to not be easily grabbed. The second was a bit more perplexing, and one Ethi couldn’t quite place. Cut had the face and chest of a woman, though the former seemed a fickle fact, with brief periods of anger or irritation bringing a masculine touch to her. Her height was a man’s as well, taller than most, even, and far taller than Ethi herself. Her arms were thicker than hers, and Ethi was no stranger to excersise.Paired with the stubble around her chin and jaw, and the bizarrely low voice with which she spoke, and Ethi could not quite place the walking contradiction before her.“Stop looking at me like that,” Cut snapped. Ethi listened, keeping her gaze ahead. There was a moment of silence and it was Cut who broke it.

“You’re here for the Sieve right? And you’re clearly from somewhere far away, we don’t get many folks with eyes like yours around here so why don’t you have enough money to get home.”

Ethi thought back to the reason for all of it, found herself not quite liking what it said about her.

“You don’t have to answer, I’m just trying to distract myself from the smell of shit,” Cut added.“I don’t really think I have a home to get back to,” Ethi mustered, feeling ill. “I got knocked out of the Sieve in the first stage and I failed to impress anyone of note with my performance. I lied, I cheated to win and I still met defeat. I brought shame upon my family, they’ll want nothing to do with me now.”When Ethi looked up she braced herself for an expression of pity. Instead she found a distant coldness in Cut’s eyes.

“So you decided to wallow in your own misery and get piss drunk for a couple of days”Ethi stamped out her anger before it even began burning. She wouldn’t start an argument, not here, not now. “Yes.”

Cut nodded. “That was awfully stupid of you.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh I’m sure I wouldn’t,” She sneered, almost amused in her tone and that sunk underneath Ethi’s skin.

“The sieve was all I had-”

“And now all you’re left with are your magic powers.” She cut in.

“You think life is easy for me because I’m a Blessed?” Ethi scoffed.

Cut looked hesitant for a second and Ethi thought she’d finally had her. “The fuck’s a blessed?”

Ethi shook her head. “It’s what we call mystics, I’ve also heard your people use the term bug for us,” a term she did not quite appreciate.

“Ah, I see,” Cut rebounded, then continued, back in her stride. “I never said life was easy for you, in fact, I only implied it wasn’t getting shit faced for two consecutive days bad.”

Ethi chewed her lip. Could dulls just not see beyond their own fucking fingers, could they just not understand the immense pressure that came with being a Blessed? “You-”

“We’re here.” Cut said, seeming to barely notice her begin to speak. She was looking up at the manhole cover, her hand on the ladder that led up to it. She looked back at Ethi. “You go first, I’m not the one with ‘Blessed’ magic,” She said in a half mocking tone.Ethi frowned but was soon climbing up. As she got to the manhole cover she cleared her mind of all idle thoughts, and then focused on Cut’s words. Of import to her were the things she said and the ways she said them, there was no substance to them of course but the smugness she conveyed them with certainly did make Ethi angry, and she needed rage to twist her magic into the form she was calling on.

She finally touched the arcane energy dwelling within her. There were seven spheres to Blessed magic, but she only needed two for physical enhancements, Cutaris; the sphere of energy and Utalis; the sphere of matter.As she touched them it became harder to maintain a hold on her emotions, magic also affected the mind. Cutaris urged her on with an adrenal frenzy, and Utalis compressed her into the stagnant inaction of steel. She withstood their jostling and brought forth her ability with a tempest of fury.

The whole world seemed bathed underneath a crimson hue, but Ethi knew it was her who glowed red. She pushed aside the cover, moving two hundred pounds of iron like it weighed nothing at all, and let go of her magic, climbing out onto the surface.Ethi had hated Udrebam since she’d got there, the air smelled like a corpse halfway through decomposition, winds like the hot breath of a wild animal’s mouth. Her journey through the sewers, though, had changed that. Ethi found a fresh appreciation for the lack of shit and piss assailing her nostrils.

“We’re almost there,” Cut announced, now next to her. She was already moving and Ethi followed.

Ethi thought she would have gotten used to the architecture on the outskirts of the island by now, but it seemed that Udrebam always had more barely-erect buildings underneath its sleeve. Were Unixians just allergic to doing things right?

She knew they were at Cut’s home only when the woman said so; it looked no different from the others. She grabbed a rock and broke through the window. Cut climbed in and Ethi followed.There was little to see this deep in the night, and everything to bump into.

“Are you trying to tell the whole world we’re home,” Cut hissed and Ethi winced.

“Sorry.”

Ethi could tell, even in the dark, that the apartment was a small thing, barely enough to be walked in. Cut put her hand underneath the bed and withdrew it with a cat in its grasp. It was barely visible in the night, fur as black as the sky, yellow, glinting eyes the only hard indicator of its presence.

“Come on Leech,” Cut whispered. “We’ve got to get going,” It climbed onto her shoulder, as if the words had been actually understood. Ethi frowned.

“You named your cat Leech?” She asked, already heading for the window when she heard the door burst open.

A man stood where it used to be; eyes wide. His gaze flickered to Ethi, and then it settled on Cut.

Fuck.