I tipped the cup back and drank deeply.

The coffee infused blood tasted somewhat metallic, salty–but underneath that, something else. A wave of flavor that spoke of predatory instincts, of sharp edges and sparking hunting impulses. The sensation vanished as soon as it appeared, so maybe that was just my mind playing tricks on me.

"So?" Magdaline asked. "Feel anything?"

"Not how it works," I shook my head.

"How does it work then?"

"You have to bounce your skill off me," I said as I slid from my top bunk down to hers. "Plus I have to do this for a bit."

I lit Zee Captain's lighter in the space between us.

"What?" Magdaline blinked. "What's the lighter supposed to do?"

"You'll see," I said, watching my mana rushing up.

"Wait," the Megalodon sniffed the air. "Mana. So much mana. How are you doing that? Is that lighter some kind of a mana-generating artifact?!”

I didn't answer her, snapping the lighter shut.

"Okay," I said, unzipping my jacket and offering her my hands. "What's your strongest skill? Bounce it off me. Pretend my body is a radar dish. Take my hands. Look at me."

Magdaline hesitantly reached out and took my hands. Her razor-sharp claws barely touched my gloves, her red eyes locked onto mine.

"How are you not terrified of me?" She asked, looking down at me. "You're so small, so... thin and frail looking. Smell... so human."

"Because I've faced scarier things than you," I replied calmly. "Now focus. What's your core, innate ability?"

"Scrutiosmia, aka Odormancy," she said. "Like dad. I can smell lies, intentions, emotions, past events, likely future paths, likely outcomes, Astral imprints..."

"Perfect," I nodded. "Focus on that. Project it at me. Imagine your skill as a wave bouncing off a mirror."

Magdaline's red eyes narrowed in concentration. Her claws tightened slightly around my hands.

"Hrm... I smell... something," she muttered. "Like... an echo? Strange."

"Keep bouncing your skill off me," I ordered. "Reach resonance. Think of the hunt, of how you chased me, of how much you... enjoyed it. Picture the dance between predator and prey. Between you and me. Shark and human wizard. Smell the ideas behind my words!"

Magdaline blushed ever so slightly, claws digging deeper into my dragonscale gloves, the hexasuits hardening over my fingers as she nearly crushed them.

Her red eyes flared brighter as she focused, projecting her power. I felt something shift inside me, like a new sense awakening.

Suddenly, scents bloomed in my awareness.

The metallic and concrete tang of the reinforced cell walls. The lingering traces of despair from the nearest Astral imprint. The sharp edge of Magdaline's predatory nature, of hunger, of desire for blood held back by the delicious beast core in her mouth. Even my own scent - a strange mix of human and something else... noise, dull static layered with traces of colorful Quetzi, black and white Thunderbird, gray Moth and blue-green Stollwurm scents.

I mentally summoned up my stats.

[System error. Unable to parse experience, no heart-core detected.]

[Delineating current state. Reassessing stats.]

[Level 4 state approximated!]

[LV 4 Skill gained: Scrutiosmia] A message flashed across my vision in white sparks.

| Name: Alexander Glock

| Age: 18

| Species & Subtype: Human-Thunderbird hybrid [with 4 other minor affinities]

| Core Affinity: N/A

| Level: 4

| Anima: 89/89 [+89] [+89] [+89] [+7] [+7]

| Anima Stamina: 1/1

| Mana: 568/46

| Mana Regen: 0.0m/hr

| Strength: 0

| Agility: 0

| Dexterity: 0

| Vitality: 0

| Charisma: 0

| Magic: 0 [+46]

| Foresight: 0

| Intelligence: 0

| Wisdom: 0

| Skills:

Thunderbird: Resonance, Lightningball, Electrofractal Sight, Dreamwalking, Chain Lightning

Quetzalcoatl: Charmchain

Stollwurm: Umbramancy, Deep Diving, Echomancy

Death Moth: Sundergate

Megalodon: Scrutiosmia

| One-way soul bounds: [Vespera Simmi, Cassiopea Cinder Nova.]

| Blood Contract Pact: Vespera Simmi, Prima-Sword

"Got it," I said.

"Got what?" She asked.

"I have Scrutiosmia," I replied.

"Oh yeah?" The shark-girl asked. "Prove it."

"Say some relevant stuff," I said. "I'll smell if it's the truth."

"Okay..." Magdaline said. "Um... I hate being in this facility."

I sniffed. The scent of truth mixed with deep loneliness and frustration wafted from her.

"You're lonely," I said, closing my eyes and inhaling her scent again, reaching deeper into... elsewhere. Sudden, new information revealed itself to me. "And you actually enjoy having a roommate, even if it's just for a day. Even if that roommate is a weird human wizard who just drank your blood, which you think is hell-a weird.”

"You could have guessed that."

"Could I?" I grinned, inhaling deeper and closing my eyes. I smelled paper. A pencil. Smoke. "You've been drawing in your spare time and then burning the results."

"What?! What in the Abyss?!”

"I can smell the pencil shavings and... oh my. Those are some spicy drawings of that... musician. What was his name? Started with a K..."

Magdaline's face went bright red.

"Kuro?" I sniffed again. "Oh yes, definitely Kuro Stardust. You've drawn him quite... extensively making out with..."

"Stop!" She let go of my fingers, buried her face in her hands, her white hair falling forward to hide her embarrassment. "Abyss! Move onto something else! Anything else!"

"Lots of people died here," I said, standing up and moving around the cell, my expression darkening as I sniffed the air. "Forty... one mundane humans. They were confused, terrified, and hostile. You... sliced through their arteries, broke their necks and then... you ate them. Your dad brought them here, bleeding... locked the door using the one hour lockdown timer… You cleaned the mess up each time and dumped the remains into the disposal chute.”

I continued walking around the cell, my new sense delving through layers of history trapped in the walls.

"Drug dealers," I sniffed near one corner. "Three of them. They tried to bribe your dad with O-bux to let them go. It didn't work. They smelled of Topaz."

Magdaline shifted uncomfortably on her bunk.

"Gang members before then," I moved to another spot. "Debtors. Seven of them. Consumed one by one. Seven days. Fourth one was on Topaz, fought back hard, had a hidden blade, but you broke his wrist and shoved the knife into his eye. You felt weird after eating him, happy... but it was just fake dreams of you being in Skyfall and actually having friends… and then your skill digested the drug... and then you cried..."

“Fuuuck,” Magdaline swallowed. “You do have Scrutimancy!”

I paused by the door. "And here... a young woman. Begged for her life.

"Around twenty four," I continued sniffing near the door. "An accountant who's been stealing money from one of the Stratos vault accounts. Your dad caught her. You felt bad about that one, since she wasn't that bad of a person. Really bad. Tried to fight the urge. Failed. Still dream about her sometimes."

Magdaline's shoulders hunched inward.

"Two assassins before then," I moved to another corner. "Hired to kill some Prima's kid. Failed. Got caught. Compulsion magic in their blood. Then three thieves who broke into the Stratos vault... then that serial killer from Scab Row who used some kind of an anti-scrying artifact to hide his deeds..."

I paused by the reinforced window, inhaling deeply. "This is where you cornered a cultist. His mind infected with a memetic. He fought back, was stronger than others and felt no pain."

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"There are others, deeper further in... but their scents get blurry. Let me try something more recent."

"What?" She asked.

"Me!" I sniffed myself. "Hrmmm. You took it easy on me. You tried to fight the urge, smelled the Skyfall Lazarus bracelet on me. Lied to me. Tried to understand what I was."

She nodded.

"Yeah," Magdaline's red eyes flickered with unease. "I... I didn't want to eat you. Not really. You smelled... different. Odd. Wrong. Hard to define."

I inhaled deeply, sorting through the scents of truth and deception. "Half-truth. You did want to eat me, but something else held you back. Something... deeper. Further ahead?"

"You smell like... hope,” she confessed after a few seconds. “Like freedom. Like someone who could actually help me. I've never smelled anything like it before."

"You don't believe that though," I came closer to her, standing directly in front of her, sniffing her. "You don't think that a mere Skyfall student could save you from anything. You think that you're worthless, just trash disposal, just a murderer that your dad's and the Stratos clan have been using..."

I leaned in closer, my new Scrutiosmia skill parsing her emotional landscape like a complex topographical map. I burned through the mana offered to me by the lighter, pushed mana through my Resonance skill like a loop and made it flow across my nose.

"You think you're broken," I said softly. "But you're not. You're just... underfed, hungry. A diamond in the rough. Sometimes the system is what's broken. Not the individual."

Magdaline's red eyes widened. "Seriously, how... How are you doing that?! You're not a Scrutimancer! You didn’t smell like a Scrutimancer at all five minutes ago!”

"I'm not," I said. "On Tuesday I..."

"Walked through the gates of Skyfall," she inhaled my breath. "And met..."

"An angel with rainbow wings," I nodded. "And..."

"Thunder," She inhaled again, tasting my intent, dissecting the past. "The cleverest Thunder-girl in Skyfall, who figured you out. Who... gradually changed you with each touch... remade you from within on a whim because she was... bored. No. A lie. Because she was incredibly desperate... Desperate to escape from her chains."

"Who..." I began, looking at the shark.

"Fell in love with you and gave you the greatest gift of all," Magdaline said, her mouth falling open, tongue caressing the beast core between her teeth. "One not meant for humans. Electofractal sight and... the Resonance skill! Abyss!"

"Resonance," I said. "An Electofractal..."

"An Astral Radar dish in your stomach tied to your soul," Magdaline breathed out. "Controlling indigestible particles of Omnid strata moving across your human innards... forming a convex mirror... a skill amplifier! Holy shit! That's how you're doing it!"

"Clever shark," I grinned.

"Sneaky little human," she smiled. "Changed by a clever, desperate Thundergirl who set something truly terrible in motion, created a human who can do magic without a heart core. Abyss!"

Her face paled.

"Heh," I said. "That was some top notch Scrutimancy, partner. Still got..."

"Two hundred and six mana," she breathed out.

"Do you want to know..." I began.

"More? Yes! Yes I do! I've never felt so clear... so sharp... So whole! It's like the hunger, the emptiness... isn't there anymore! Just Understanding... just the flow. Resonance!"

"How about a dance, partner?" I asked, unzipping my pocket and pulling out a phone from the extradimensional pouch.

“Oh! Dad didn’t destroy your phone?” She grinned.

“That wasn’t my phone,” I answered. “That was Vespera’s second phone. She gave it to me when she ran off to the coliseum for a nap.”

The Megalodon Scrutimancer laughed and stood up from her bank and reached out to me. I grabbed her silver-blue hand.

"Yulia play Johann Strauss II - The Blue Danube Waltz," I ordered. "Then spice it up, make it more fun, write some relevant, cute lyrics!"

Violin music filled our cell as Magdaline and I began to step in perfect sync, her predatory instincts and my newly acquired Scrutiosmia creating a feedback loop of hyper-awareness.

My hand slid down to Magdaline's waist. Her razor-sharp claws slid onto my shoulder, careful not to tear the fabric of my borrowed orange jumpsuit.

Our hands entwined.

We began with a basic Viennese Waltz pattern - a natural turn that spun us clockwise. Her red eyes locked with mine, no longer filled with hunger, but a flame of Understanding backlit by fireworks of excitement.

The violins soared as we spun across the small cell, our movements perfectly synchronized through shared Scrutiosmia. Magdaline's white hair whirled around us like ocean spray.

Her predatory movements–the skill only previously used to hunt, to murder and consume criminals in this cell–became something elegant, beautiful.

Each step calculated, each turn precise.

My hexasuit-enhanced agility matched her shark-like grace in perfect synchronicity.

The song shifted away from the Blue Danube as Yulia finished writing the music and began to sing.

“Through depths of space, the Wormwood ever-falls

Dead echoes whisper through these hexcrete halls

Dance of predator, dance of prey

As the Earth turns, night shifts to day.”

I spun Magdaline across our tiny cell with impossible grace, guiding each of her motions through broadcast intent. She was taller than me, but it didn’t matter in the slightest.

“Leviathan's children dance and dream

Where thunder meets the rainbow's gleam

Between the stars and endless deep

Where human hearts their secrets keep

Teeth of starlight, wings of flame

Entropy's hunger cannot stake its claim

Souls entwined beyond blood and bone

Where neither has to be alone.”

Yulia sang.

We moved faster, our steps matching the rising tempo. Red eyes against green. A river of blood framed by evergreen pines.

“Resonance between two souls

Makes broken pieces into wholes

Shark and wizard dance as one

Their road onward just begun.”

Magdaline laughed wildly as I spun her again as the lyrics repeated.

The cold, bare hexcrete cell vanished. There were only waves of a red sea smashing against the land of brown cliffs and evergreen hills with each rising and falling tone of the violin.

As the song reached its crescendo and fell silent, Magdaline and I stopped, breathless. Her red eyes were wide, no longer predatory, but alive and sparkling with tears.

She believed me now with her entire Fractal Engine heart. I had captured her attention. My personal Scrutimancer shark. Time to learn some things. Together.

We stopped by the cell door above which a red number was counting down.

"Scrutimancer Satosh..." I began.

"Lost his wife eleven years ago..." She said, blinking more sparks from her eyes.

"A Topaz-peddling human gang from Scab Row…" I pulled information from the air around us, from the footsteps of Satosh that lingered here again and again, from his breath, from his fear and hatred. "Killed Enni Satoshi. They sealed her bracelet in a magisteel box with anti-scrying runes, making sure she couldn't be brought back."

"By the time Satosh tore through their hideout and found her bracelet and incarnated her.... she didn't know how to talk, could only stare blankly at him, and didn't remember him. She's in the White Hall of Serenity Springs Asylum now," Magdaline revealed. "Dad's been... shattered since then..."

"He became over-focused on trying to uplift his daughter who lost her mom and could not control her Megalodon heart," I pulled on the Astral string, unraveling it. "In an attempt to solve her problem, he put her into an overpriced Academy he could not hope to afford. There, poor Magdaline found no friends and thus only made her condition worse."

I dug into my pocket and pulled out a vial of Emerald's blood that I had extracted a few days ago from her sleeping form, but didn't have time to do anything with.

"Emerald Stratos..." I uncorked the vial of the dragon-girl's blood.

"Offered to pay him extra..." Magdaline inhaled deep, her eyes flashing like rubies. "To do progressively worse, illegal things."

"And Satosh accepted them," I resumed, the Astral imprint of Satosh and the blood of Emerald spilling its secrets to us. "Became bound more and more to her whims. Helped her get in touch with a Clan of Skinwalkers. Offered them a young singer, put a potent tracking spell on her. Helped a devious red dragon rescue the singer and then aided the Quetzi and dragon to execute the Skinwalk Clan and bury them at sea. Thanks to this job, he had enough for two years of school fees for his little darling shark..."

"But then like a fool, she mauled Three Omnids in full view of prospective students," Magdaline continued, holding onto my hands. "Primo-borns… who often hung out with Emerald, her friends. And so, the knob-shark was sent to juvie. And so Scrutimancer Satosh became even more reckless and desperate. Emerald offered him enough gold for another year at Skyfall. The dragoness promised Satosh to hire a lawyer who could reduce his daughter’s sentence..."

"To make Skyfall student Alexander Glock disappear," I said.

"Who's Astral imprint smelled like a human on Wednesday night," Magdaline added. "Who was also conveniently asked to be imprisoned by..."

"An agent of a wealthy Thunderland Omnicorp," I pulled on the thread harder with my new skill. "Which also paid quite well for the contract Satosh accepted."

"He ignored that the target smelled a bit off on Friday," Magdaline said. "It was too late to back out of the two signed contracts by then. He was confident that his daughter would be able to devour Alexander Glock just as she had devoured the other forty one humans and cast his untasty Lazarus bracelet and shredded outfit into the incinerator chute…”

“And then Satosh would obtain Alexander’s bracelet from the ashes during his night shift and deliver it to the Omnicorp agent." Both of us looked at the metal door of the incinerator chute on the wall beside us.

"Satoshi made just one fatal mistake," I added with a smile, "he couldn't sniff out..."

"Twenty million worth of beast cores in the boy's pocket," Magdaline uttered. "Because an extradimensional space cannot be penetrated by Scrutiosmia.”

I nodded.

“Plus your entire outfit, the jacket, the gloves, the pants... they don't smell like anything at all for some reason,” she stared at me.

"Nitoroc panther leather atop of dragonscale," I tapped my sleeve. "Anti-scrying runes woven into the inner lining."

"Ah," Magdaline nodded. "That’d do it. That’d absolutely screw with Scrutimancy."

My mana dropped to zero. I sealed the vial of Emerald's blood and slipped it back into my extradimensional pocket. Magdaline blinked, letting go of my hands.

"Wow," she said. "So that's what it's like to be a proper Scrutimancer. I've... I've never been able to deduce so much before by smell!"

I smiled at her.

"You aren't going to abandon me in this cell, right?" She asked. "You didn't just use me to get all that information out of me to use it against my dad?"

"Did it feel like that was the case?" I asked.

"No," Magdaline said softly. "It felt... like nothing I've done before. Like I finally woke up after eleven years of being asleep at the wheel. Thank you."

"See?" I said. "You're not just trash disposal. You're a talented Scrut. All it took was a dance, a song written by an AI and some Resonance magic to unlock your potential."

She suddenly went down on one knee.

"I, Magdaline Satoshi, do hereby pledge myself forevermore as a Sixie to..." She looked up at me with wide eyes.

"Clan I Love you." I filled in with a smile.

Magdaline blinked. "Clan... I Love You?"

"Welcome aboard," I offered her my hand.

Her razor-sharp teeth glinted as she burst out laughing, accepting my hand to stand up. "THAT'S your clan name? Abyss, I thought you were kidding before! WHY?! It sounds like a bad boy band or a cheesy romance novel!"

"Nobody expects 'I Love You' to be a serious threat," I grinned.

"Fair enough," she wiped a white-blue hand across her eyes, an extra-toothy smile stretching wide.

The clock on the door reached zero and then the bolt snapped open.

"Shall we tour the facilities then, my Sixie darling?" I asked.

“With pleasure, my Slayer,” she replied, sharp eyes filled with red sparks of mirth.