AKI:

The room was largely bare, just a bed in the far corner and a small desk facing the window. It made sense in a way; Merkus never seemed the sentimental sort. Still, it wasn’t what I’d imagined. I found it odd that his room didn’t match his chaotic brilliance. My mind had envisaged piles of books and papers, knots of tools and half-finished designs, signs of explosive experiments, a cache of bizarre weaponry, and other eclectic and miscellaneous tidbits strewn about the room. But then again, this room didn’t belong to Merkus. No, this room belonged to Knite, the renounced prince of Evergreen.

Anger bubbled. Not the hateful anger I held for Kalin or my scornful contempt for those entitled brats from The Branches, but anger nonetheless. After Diloni…

I sat on the bed and removed oversized boots from my tired feet. I remembered his kindness then, remembered why he was late that very morning and how he had always treated me like an equal. That he called me a friend. I found it hard to stay angry after that.

I lay on his bed, the bread, fruit, and watered wine I’d relieved from the pantry comforting me like an inside-out embrace. It settled in my stomach and soothed my body, seducing me with the promise of a peaceful sleep. I closed my eyes just to rest them, just for a…

***

Her smile. It haunts. I expect to see it. I don’t want to see it, but I expect to. I turn, and there she is. Panic hits me. I tremble. Sweat cascades down my back and forehead. I drop to my knees, my thoughts too mired by injury to maintain the effort of standing. The shine of lustrous teeth pulls at me, demanding attention. Commanding it. I listen.

Her smile. It haunts. So I look down. She will take no more. I see her smile again, but it's different. The same, but different. This one frees me, untangling fear from my limbs.

I look up. It haunts. But her smile feeds me now, the panic becoming anger. Cold, deep anger. I look down again, and my fury scurries away.

“Forgive her?” She asks in a language that I know but don’t recognize.

“No,” I reply in that same language. It is hard to refuse her, and so it comes out angry. I love this woman, but she is weak. She’s not worthy of being obeyed. She is not all of who I love, just most, yet she is worth more than her whole. She’s worth it all.

I see her first tear. It is mine, shed for me. I cannot afford to listen, however loudly it rolls down her cheek. I shake my head. I must do this. She cannot divert me from this. Not this. She’s as good as dead. I love this woman, but she is already gone.

So I look up and find my anger.

Her smile. It haunts. But now I welcome it. Need it. To see it change. To watch it feel pain and to be the one to bring it about. She must die.

I look down for the last time. Her eyes are dead, but her smile is still bright. I know she’s no longer here, but her request is. It lies in that smile etched onto her face, confident I would follow wherever she led, wherever goodness was sure to rest. I study her face. It feels like it'll be the last time I see it. I promise myself that I will not forget her, whatever comes next.

I look back up.

Her smile. It haunts. The panic is back. I know I cannot act. I know I cannot do as I please. Or maybe that is all I can do. This woman who stands before me is the product of my hate and ambition. I created her. My inaction incubated her birth. She wears the skin of the person I love dearest, but she looks nothing like her. I feel the panic, but my gaze is steady, my will unbroken. Anger and pride, my friends, are with me.

She approaches slowly, each step deliberate. I notice her shoulder and the mark thereupon. My anger flashes, peaking over my control. Her smile broadens.

“You are such a wonderful man,” she says, standing over me as I kneel over my love. My dead love. “If only there were more of your like.”

I maintain eye contact. She may have broken herself, but not me. I refuse to be broken. I am heavy. Heavy with duty, with anger, with my imminent death. I stand. Best to die on my feet, unbroken.

A thought invades my mind as I reach my full height, giving me strength. What if? What if I can break it all? My heart lays in my arms, dead. My hate stands before me, strong. I cannot let that be. I cannot bring her back, but damn if I cannot make sure my hate follows her into death.

So, what if—

***

I heaved and wrenched forward, drenched in sweat. I thought I knew pain and hate. I was wrong. The dream had shown me the truth of it. Real anguish. The pain of lost love. The pain of hopeless anger. The hatred it bore.

The last I’d cried was eight cycles ago. The first two were difficult. Like most children, I was prone to childish hysteria, to an inborn notion that being loud enough for long enough helped solve problems. I got over that. The two after that I spent wondering why others didn’t outgrow it like they did bed-wetting. The following two I did unwittingly. Then, one day, I’d seen a babe cry in his mother's embrace and wondered if I could muster a tear if I tried.

I need not have tried.

Details of the dream dawdled, haunting me like a disgruntled ghost whose nails of sorrow raked my mind. The two women were a mystery. They were identical, yet so different. One was beautiful, her eyes large and kind, a smile on her face even as she died. The other was hideous, her gaze loathsome, her grin a mockery of smiles.

I peeled off the blanket that covered me. A shiver danced across my dew-and-sweat-kissed skin. Encouraged by the cold, I swung my legs off the bed. I hadn’t slept long; the star-speckled dark of night still clung to the sky. A snap of my fingers brought the lantern by the door to life. I stretched my back and shoulders, trying to work out the cramps and pains of adjusting to a comfortable bed.

I lurched to my feet, eyes transfixed on the lantern.

How?

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

My pool and knowledge of sensus weren’t up to the task, so how had I so quickly and unconsciously turned on the matrix lantern?

An abrupt pressure stole my awareness. It pushed against my temples, pulsing and growing into waves of tension that sought to evict my thoughts from their home. A sourceless light invaded my sight. Weakness had me swaying on my feet. Death approached. I could feel it with an angry clarity. I stood still, eyes clenched shut, my rage gradually dictating order to my frantic mind.

“Raathi, garow, gelli, faqur,” I said, the language familiar and unfamiliar at once. Explore, identify, trap, and execute.

My right hand moved of its accord. Sensus flowed from my soul and emanated from my forefinger, dancing into existence a glowing cube of lines, curves, and specks. A final stroke set the cube spinning, each rotation shrinking the construct.

I stared at my creation—if I could call it mine. It came to a stop and hovered before me. The design had shrunk with the shape, maintaining its original proportions so that the lines and symbols were hair-thin and the specks had all but vanished.

The tension behind my eyes reached new highs. I clutched my head and reeled back from the cube. The block of matrixes rushed towards me as though in aid. It penetrated my throat with nothing but a warm touch, calmly settling around the back of my neck.

The headache ceased as quickly as it had come. I opened my eyes. The cube hovered in the air a few paces away. Dark, viscous fluid had replaced many of the elaborate designs within. The tar-like substance pushed against the borders and rolled across the six faces, and though the lines of the cube bent with the thrashing of its occupant, they did not yield. I stared, fascinated and terrified by the prison and its captive. Yet curiosity won over fear, and I leaned in to study them both.

The cube exploded. I recoiled from the resulting motes of light and tumbled backward onto the bed, rubbing away immaterial debris from my eyes with the back of my hand. I clambered away until my head hit a wall, then slid into a sitting position, my breaths quick and shallow.

The lantern light had gone out. I strained my eyes against the moonlit darkness. Deep shadows scared me as they had when I was a child who knew no better than to believe they hid monsters, except now they did. Silence reigned. I saw nothing of the inky creature but unassuming suspects of dark corners and deep contours.

Then came the flicker of a shadow. Once seen, the creature was hard to miss. Its bulging form rolled across the ceiling towards the window. Spider-like limbs protruded from its body, its silent movements a bizarre skittering of a dozen legs.

“Katar ka mala wag siyo,” I heard myself say in that odd language, the words prompted by a thought not my own. Do not reward malicious audacity with leniency.

I got off the bed. Unprompted, my hand initiated another stroke of arcane artistry. I could feel some of the knowledge behind my actions now, a vague idea of the concepts involved. I drew the minor functions of the Alchemy matrix, building them into a more extensive system, lacing the forces with sensus to protect the inscriptions as I solidified the intent. In a mere handful of seconds, I’d created two bowl-shaped matrixes.

My attentions honed back in on the naftajar. I knew it now. Knew it for the atrocity that it was: a cannibalized soul, an abomination created and used by the collectors. I couldn’t recall who the collectors were or the creature's purpose, but I knew what it was, and with the knowledge came anger, a feverish and intractable storm unlike the cold breeze I was used to subduing.

The two hemispheres of my matrix sprang into action. Spiral forces slowed the naftajar to a crawl. It inched closer to the window, quivering in its struggle. I pushed more sensus into the matrix. The naftajar slowed, then stopped, and then slid towards me, limbs flailing.

Hurried footsteps approached. My concentration slipped, and with it, the influx of knowledge I could not remember learning rushed from my mind. Adeenas crashed into the room. The naftajar fell to the floor. The backlash from the broken matrix hurled me onto the bed.

Adeenas took the room in at a glance. “Just my luck. Why couldn’t it have been an intruder made of flesh and bone? Why must I deal with…” She sighed. “I suppose we can’t have it wandering back to its master, can we?”

She turned to close the door. I caught a glint of metal, finding the famous Pinmoon daggers hanging from her waist. One was dark grey, thinner at its base than my smallest finger, dull as though made of charcoal: Pin. The other was a wide, crescent-shaped sliver of bright silver: Moon. With them, she’d killed a Leaf. A Titled godling. No other Named had ever come close to achieving such a deed. All agreed fortune had helped her that day, but the deed was impressive nevertheless. Lorail agreed. She’d pronounced Adeenas her adjudicator the very same day, protecting her from whatever punishment House Bainan sought to inflict on the Bark.

“Guess we’re stuck here until Master gets back,” Adeenas said.

“By master, do you mean Knite?”

She looked at me from over her shoulder. “Rather presumptuous of you, wouldn’t you say?”

“How so?”

“Well, he is a prince, leastways. Referring to him by name is—”

“He was a friend before he was a prince.”

“He was a prince before you were born.”

“Not to me.”

Adeenas shrugged. “It’s your life.”

“Why must we wait for him?”

She ran a hand through her greying hair, the only outward sign she carried more than a century. Adeenas was old even before Diloni was born, yet the privilege of power was so great as to afford her time itself.

“Letting that thing escape would be… troublesome,” she said. “And it isn’t a problem I’m well suited for. I was hoping you’d found some royal or other, preferably a Fiora. I haven’t killed one of them since—”

“You know, you’re rather young for someone of your age.”

She smiled at me as a predator might smile at prey. “Why, thank you.”

“It wasn’t a compliment. Who sent the naftajar?”

Adeenas’ smile widened. It made her look as mad as the myths she’d inspired. “Not sure, exactly.”

“Can’t we let it go and follow?”

“Not worth the risk.”

I looked down at my hands, replaying how I’d drawn an Alchemy matrix so complex as to exceed those I’d seen etched on the murals decorating the academy walls as a picture of what they expected their students to aim for, an illustration of what ambition could achieve. The knowledge of the matrix’s inner workings had already spilled from my mind, lost and unreachable, a permanently clouded figment of my impressive memory—a memory I had thought infallible.

“How had I done it?” I whispered the question to myself with an awe I did not hold for its apparent recipient.

“A secret you are not ready for.” Adeenas—or was it Helena—pointed at the naftajar. Even that simple gesture evoked a sense of sharpness, her every movement appearing lethal. “That thing is the least of the dangers you’d face if our enemies discovered you were aware of them and their plans.”

“So you and Merkus keep saying.”

Helena settled on the bed beside me. “You’re going to have to stop thinking of him as Merkus, you know. I can’t say I’m not having the same problem, but I suppose knowing what it could cost me has me better motivated.”

“What cost?”

Her playful madness receded, and she answered with but one word: “Death.”

“He wouldn’t… ” I trailed off. The words I intended to speak were hollow. He is my friend, I thought, but can a stranger be a friend? Do I know him well enough to make claims about what he might do? Do I know him at all?

“It’s not that you don’t know him; it’s that you only know a part of him,” Addy said. “It’s not that he isn’t your friend; it’s that he is more. Much, much more.”

I looked away, ashamed. It had been some time since I’d been so easy to read. After years of practice and discipline, my armor of indifference was crumbling away.

“I jest,” she said. “Mostly. The Prince is the most honorable of the gods. Trust me, I’ve met plenty enough to know and too many not to care. Just remember, Master is more fearsome than he is honorable, and it is madness to arouse his discontent, be they man or god.”

“We could leave and trap it in here,” I said, changing the subject. “The naftajar doesn’t seem to have much in the way of speed.”

“No,” Addy said, watching the naftajar. “What it lacks in speed, it makes up for in suppleness. There might be paths of escape I’m unable to follow. I will not take the risk. Best to keep guard and be sure.”

“Where exactly did Mer—Knite go?”

“To salvage what remains of his plans.”

My hand reached for the back of my head. I stopped myself mid-motion and let my hand drop back into my lap. “And when will he return?”

“Before the first bell.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

She eyed me, her intense stare pregnant with the weight of her answer. “There’s a reason I call him fearsome, Aki. You’d best remember that.”