Crow had expected monsters when he emerged. Animals, perhaps. Certainly killers, whatever species spawned them. His anticipation dropped with the jolt of a fallen hammer.
There were no brandished weapons or dribbling fangs, only an open, well lit room larger and more welcoming than any he’d yet seen. Without decor.
He gazed around the hall for what felt like an age before his crazed, thrill-blinded mind accepted it had no fight to offer.
The magic left him reluctantly, struggling every inch it moved to be tucked back away in his vessel. A decision made neither prematurely or late. It was fortunate, he supposed, that his spheres had such perfectly opposing cognitive influences.
“It’s safe,” he called out. Voice as steady as he could make it with the cocktail of warring emotions left by withdrawn magic.
Grunting and scratching were his only answers, and Crow waited seconds for Unity and Ethi to join him, moving awkwardly through the fissure.
“I should’ve made it wider.” The black-haired boy hissed.
“And burned twice as much from your reserves?” Retorted Ethi, stumbling slightly as she fell through behind him. “It can’t be so trivial for you to use this much magic.”
The girl’s face was red, though from pain or irritation Crow wasn’t sure. He prepared for conflict all the same, for either would quicken a temper and sharpen a tongue.
“Unlike you, I have an abundance of power at my disposal. There’s little point in that if it isn’t all used, is there?”
“I’ll bear that in mind if you ever start to grow tired.”
Crow started moving ahead, eager to distract the pair from their bickering. His teammates followed, as did their agitations.
“There’s no need to go to the trouble,” Unity shot back, "I’m sure you’ll have already run on and left me to die by the time such a thing comes to pass.”
“Drown yourself, you putrid rat.” Spat Ethi, the sudden hate in her words stunning Crow and pulling his eyes back. He saw her face near crimson with rage, Unity’s as pale as ever. Lit by a smile.
“I don’t think I will, it would be so much easier to simply drop my guard around a body of water and let you do it for me. Put your secrecy to good use”
The boy leapt back just as she leapt forwards, eyes meeting with an intensity that might have melted anything caught between them.
“Enough.” Crow began, stepping to place himself between them. He faltered, then froze at the feel of Unity touching his magic.
“If you try that again, I’ll turn you into a pile of meat.” Said Unity, oceanic eyes falling upon the girl with a frightful focus. Voice hard and soft at once like a blade wrapped in silk.
There was something dangerous in him, suddenly. Something that promised, rather than threatened, an imminent violence. It seemed enough, for Ethi didn’t take another step.
“Where are the both of you from?” Crow asked; fighting the panicked constricting of his vocal chords with every word, desperate to turn the topic to something else. Anything else.
Neither gave him so much as a glance, their hate proving a greater lock than Crow could pry open. Seconds passed without speech before, so very slowly, Unity broke the deadlock.
“Crow, if you’re going to try to distract people… Make it less obvious than a punch to the face.”
The tension didn’t vanish. Muscles remained taut, magic continued to lap at the edges of its wielders’ consciousnesses and the air remained tinged with the pungent scent of nearing battle.
Yet Unity no longer faced Ethi, and neither of them leaned forwards in preparation for a charge. Crow’s shoulders slumped as he released his fear in a deep, unbroken breath.
“You didn’t answer my question.” Crow noted. He began to walk once more, feeling another flood of relief as both teammates followed.
“Why don’t you try answering it yourself, first? Maybe this topic will be far enough removed from our odds of victory for Queen Bitch to share along with us.”
“If you insist.”
Crow thought for a moment, finding it oddly difficult to decide where he ought to begin.
Such questions were easy to answer in Rindarth, the Barony was home to only three regions and perhaps a dozen cities. All were known to most by name, and Crow could convey the broadstrokes of his life by simply revealing which landmark he’d been born the fewest leagues from.
Udrebam was not in the Barony of Rindarth. It was barely in the same Princedom, and a territory covering one tenth of Unix was too large by far for any settlement Crow had set foot in to be known across.
“Pit, it’s not that difficult a question.” Snapped Unity, impatience drawing creases across his ceramic face.
“Shut up and wait.” Ethi answered. Crow silently thanked the girl for saving him the trouble.
“I’m from a town called Selsis,” he said at last. “In the Barony of Rindarth, perhaps three hundred leagues from here. It’s remote and small. A farming town. I’m one of a few mystics there, though none of the others trekked to Udrebam for the Sieve.”
Crow worried he’d been too light on detail, yet Unity and Ethi seemed no less focused.
“My uncle was the one who taught me magic,” he continued. The stab of emotion at mentioning Galad threatened to send his voice shaking and cracking. “Me and my sister, that is. She entered the Sieve along with me, but we got separated when… well, anyway, I expect I’ll meet her in later stages if I get that far.”
He met Unity and Ethi’s eyes, studying them despite himself. Trying to see whether they’d caught the ommisive lie. He needn’t have bothered.
“Don’t stop on our account,” the girl said. She gestured as if to rush him along, however when Crow opened his mouth again Unity spoke in his place.
“No, I think we understand your humble origins quite well. I’m far more interested in where our touchy friend comes from.”
Blue eyes came to rest on Ethi; a challenge clear in them. Crow wasn’t sure what had made Unity so captivated by the girl’s guarded tongue, but knew it wouldn’t be let go anytime soon.
She recognised the look, yet her tightening jaw and squaring shoulders seemed to constrain whatever anger it sparked.
“I’m from Takawa.” She said, meeting Unity’s eye. “An island under the Great Have Empire a few leagues to the north of Arcane, quite separated from the Alliance and all its territories. Yet not so much that I don’t recognise the Eden child.”
It took a moment for her words to sink in, and when they did Crow found Unity’s face striking a chord deep within his memory. Descriptions and sketches he’d glimpsed in newspapers came rushing forwards like a tidal wave, threatening to floor him with the weight of their significance.
“You are.” He gasped, shock reducing his voice to a whisper. “Pit, the Eden child.”
He’d been a fool not to see it at first sight, then a bigger fool by half not to make the connection upon hearing the boy’s name. Unity looked different from the likenesses posted in papers, yet not so much that his face and moniker weren’t clue enough.
The smarmy, jeering boy walking alongside Crow, whose needling taunts had almost earned him a punch, had been created by the hand of Unix’s Faction Founders. A living legend.
“Shit.” Crow gasped, realising, again, how near he’d come to breaking a Deity-made nose.
“Stop gawping,” the boy snapped. His tone was no more shrill or barbed than before, yet it somehow rang far more alien in Crow’s ears. It didn’t seem right that a thing as distant as the Eden child should be speaking to him. Certainly not with so human a tongue.
Certainly not to say half the things he has, or look at people the way he did Ethi.
Discontent shifted painfully in Crow’s gut as he mused on the boy, not doubting his identity for an instant, yet finding himself eager to do so.
“Sorry.” He managed, wrenching himself from the depths of stunned bafflement. “It’s just… surprising.”
“Surprising,” Ethi agreed, “And very strange not to share with one’s teammates. Doubly so when throwing around accusations of distrust and subterfuge.”
“Don’t pretend not to have known since the moment you saw me,” Unity retorted. He seemed off-balance to Crow, considering two things for every one he said. Oddly strained.
“Oh I knew, though it took me a while to realise Crow didn’t. I can’t imagine why you’d have kept it to yourself.”
“Why don’t you drop these tiresome pretences and take a guess?”
“I reckon you’ve left us to guess enough.” Crow cut in.
Unity met his eye with a harsh glare, but it fizzled out in moments. His gaze dropped, lips thinned.
“Alright. What do you want to know?”
“Why’d you hide being who you are?” Asked Crow. He didn’t care to dress the question up.
“I won’t answer that. Ask another question.”
The silence apparently said enough.
“Ask and I’ll answer if I can,” the artificial snapped, “But I won’t tell you everything. Any more than you would me.”
Crow thought for a second, then tried again.
“What are you doing in the Sieve?”
“I told you, I was forced to enter by a number of people with an inconvenient amount of interest in my life.”
“Tell us in more detail then.” Ethi said; calm, cold.
They took another half dozen steps before Unity spoke again.
“Fine. I was entered to show the city that the noble spirit of the blessed Faction Founders lives on in me, to demonstrate my magical aptitude whilst embodying the best of both Unixian Factions. The strict discipline of the Zoric, the surgical orderliness of the Xion. The benevolence of the Alliance as a whole.”
The boy’s voice took on an exaggeratedly bumptious pitch, his hands splaying as if mocking an orchestra even as he conducted it.
“You make it sound like the whole city could see you.” Crow cut in, drawing an irritated glance from the boy.
Not boy, artificial. Born of magic. Pit.
“They can.” Unity answered, and Crow saw a flicker of endemic amusement colour his eyes.
“The original plan was that I’d enter through a specific point and be followed by scrying magic as I went, my every deed projected for the folks watching at home to witness on their slates. I think my running off to take a random entrance might have ruined that, but they might have found me again by now.”
Crow was struck dumb by the revelation.
He was well familiar with scrying magic- his wrist was housing it even as he walked- but he’d always considered them a limited trick. Fit to display the contents of a single room, perhaps. Letting him watch plays unfold from miles away with the communal piece in Selsis, before it had broken.
It had never occurred to him that such things could track a boy as he moved through corridors and chambers. The thought was only worsened knowing Crow would be sharing that projection with him.
“You could’ve warned us.” He mumbled, though the complaint seemed small in his thoughts and smaller still spoken out loud.
“Or I could’ve left you in blissful ignorance. I made a call, and there was little way of knowing whether it was the right one.” Crow didn’t bother to hide his annoyance.
“Why would they risk showing you to the public?” Ethi asked, seemingly uncaring either way. Unity answered with a surprising laugh.
“Oh there it is. I was wondering how long you’d take to question my place in the centre of attention.”
“Are you dodging the question now?” The girl pressed. Unity raised a placating hand.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“No, I’ll answer it. The Alliance is slipping. The Princes are fracturing more every day, crossing one another over one thing or another. The Faction Leaders decided that they needed to remind everyone of their roots.”
“And they’re using you to do that?” Ethi asked. Crow shared her scepticism.
“They’re very desperate.” Unity added.
Crow believed him. He’d heard tales of the Eden Child, talk of a malformed, wretched thing who toyed with people as a cat might mice. If even a tenth of them were true, his teammate was far more dangerous than Ethi had warned.
He knew, at least, those stories that spoke instead of an unimpeachable angel were bullshit.
Of course. He realised, silently cursing his slowness. She warned me. How on Mirandis would she have had any idea of what type he was, were she not already familiar with him?
Quiet consumed them again for some time, the weight of Unity’s confession crushing conversation to dust beneath it. Crow found himself racking his brain for more questions.
He could think of none, and their absence frustrated him endlessly. Few times would be better to spout childish inquiries than a monotonous trekk alongside the Eden Child, and many worse.
“Why did you run?” He asked, thought occurring to him seemingly from nowhere.
Unity didn’t bat an eye.
“Because I found the constant bickering of the Factions tiresome.” The boy said, sounding almost lazy. As though the very thought of them bored him.
“Bickering?”
The artificial eyed Crow for a second before speaking once more.
“The Factions don’t work as seamlessly as many might like to believe, I think I told you this already. They’re in a constant state of light opposition to one another, competing for support and stature within Unix as a whole. And that’s to say nothing of the Princes, Barons and other bastards squabbling beneath them. I would be quite an easy way to progress some of their few shared goals, even with my reputation, and so they were each tediously eager to ensure I prioritised them.”
“So you just ran?” Ethi gasped, eyes wide with shock.
Unity appeared proud of the reaction.
“So I ran.” He confirmed. “I’m sure there’ll be consequences later, but for now I remain bereft of any headaches.”
Before any more questions could occur to Crow, Unity set his sight on Ethi.
“Now then, I think I’ve revealed quite enough about myself. Will you be meeting us halfway this time?”
The sudden change of topic and manner left Crow wincing, well familiar with where it had led before. He heard Ethi’s breath catch in her throat, then saw the tremble of her lips.
But what do they tremble for? He wondered.
Guilt? Fury? Disgust at the casual ease with which Unity’s manipulation had been woven? Perhaps it was a blend of all that and more. Crow could tell the girl didn’t like the boy, he was no fool, but more than that, he felt certain there was some hidden meaning to all of Eden’s jibes. The effect they had on her would be strange, were there not.
“You know what it is you’re asking of me, don’t you?” Asked Ethi, surprisingly calm in the face of yet more prodding.
Her voice was small, though as far from soft as Crow might imagine. A needle in place of a feather.
“Both of you have more power right now than I will even in a year or two.
A smile twisted her mouth like the wound of an axe’s bite. Bitter, accepting.
“A tetramage and a pentamage, how lucky I am to have such gifted teammates. And how cursed to fall so short of that mark myself.”
There was sadness mingling with the iron, and it drove Crow to heed every word.
“I can’t match either of your power, so don’t expect me to match your confidence.”
Crow saw it then, the glint in her eye that punctuated the declaration. Half envy, half hate. All fear.
It confused him as much as anything, drove him to speak.
“I saw you fight. Saw you move. You can’t tell me that level of speed is so feeble, I’m not sure I could achieve it even with all my potency at once.”
And Crow knew there would be little chance for him to find out. Once an ability had been created; the sphere or spheres concentrated, amount and direction of magic determined, it took time to alter. Any reliable technique was born from countless hours of practice, memorising an impossibly complex pattern of magic and repeating it until it became second nature. Changing one after the fact was no quick thing.
Galad had told him he was exceptionally fast, but Crow doubted anyone was so fast at all with such things. He’d taken a month to alter his enhancement, when last he tried.
Crow had considered creating another from scratch. He couldn’t shape his magic with more potency than his body could output, no matter how many abilities it was divided between, but there was a strength in versatility alone. Being able to change out one technique for another depending on situation.
He’d never gotten round to it. There were always more pressing things to do with the time required. More areas of magic to practice.
“You did.” Ethi said, though seemed no less combative. “And I’ll be keeping the specifics of that to myself.”
Her answer did nothing to quell Crow’s confusion, yet an urgent word from Unity snapped his attention entirely away from the conversion.
“Stop, eyes front.” Barked the artificial. Crow did as said without thinking, seeing why only a moment later.
The corridor ahead was far different from the path they’d taken to it.
Walls were spliced by circular gaps filled with inky shadow obfuscating whatever lay beneath. The floor was marred by dozens of creases, all meeting about edges to form plates he could tell at a glance would sink beneath pressure.
Mechanisms surely lay in wait to be tripped by the shifting of weight across stone, yet Crow couldn’t begin to guess what they might do. Nothing good, he knew.
“Thanks.” He breathed, glancing at Unity but finding the boy’s gaze fixed solidly on the path before them.
“No way of telling what kind of traps are lining this hall.” The artificial muttered, sounding more irritated than scared. He looked at Ethi, eyes catlike.
“Say, how would you like an opportunity to test your agility to its utmost?”
She didn’t answer, merely looked out at the waiting perils herself.
“You’re so certain there are traps?” She asked.
“I’m not.” Answered Unity. “Just taking a break to catch my breath. Don’t slow down on my account, ladies first.”
Talk of rest made Crow suddenly aware of his own exhaustion. He’d been tired before Unity had opened the wall, and it had only been the touch of magic and the friction of his teammates that had kept him from noticing.
He buried it. There would be time to nurse his fatigue later.
“Crow, I think this is the perfect moment for you to shine.” Unity spoke again. There wasn’t even the ghost of a joke in his tone, and Crow wasn’t sure whether to find that comforting or all the more unnerving.
“What do you mean?” He asked.
“I mean that this situation is perfect for you to get us through. Use that forewarning ability you described, heighten your senses to the preternatural scale. Dodge.”
Crow had expected the answer, yet he’d asked to hear it anyway. A last attempt to delay his inevitable advance.
Because it was his advance to be made. Unity was right, neither he nor Ethi were even half so fit for it.
Manamis turned his thoughts to ice, banishing panic and stilling emotion. Simultaneously Neramis seemed to draw his eyes back from the world, rendering it an insignificant strip of parchment to be observed from afar and at his leisure.
The hall took on a new form to his gaze.
All irrationality was squeezed from the passage like pus from a putrescent wound, cleaning it and leaving only the truth to be beheld.
It was a fascinating change. The magic made Crow no more intelligent, he knew. His skill and knowledge was unchanged, yet the focus brought by his newfound detachment revealed potential points of danger and ideal angles of approach he’d never have noticed otherwise.
Drinking in the information was intoxicating, and it was only the influence of his physical enhancement that broke Crow’s stupor.
I could study the path more. He mused. Take my time, be sure of safety.
He decided against the notion almost instantly. Neramis urged him to act only with situational omniscience, yet Cutaris drove him on. Manamis, turning against its usual partner, drew his focus to the value of time and tipped the scales toward action. Decision made by thoughts not entirely his own.
Crow’s first step brought a flood of eagerness as he awaited the inevitable strike, the need for action remaining alone in his head as all other sensations were purged by the mental sphere. His senses seemed to expand with the second, and by the third he felt sure his ears had turned to eyes.
It was only on Crow’s fifth step that his waited attack came, though he saw it on his fourth. Just over the horizon- a slight peek ahead. Mere moments.
Yet no less crucial for it.
The clicking of a tripped mechanism rang out, joined by the grinding of edged steel against polished stone. Crow saw the spear points as they struck his side; drawing blood, knocking the wind from him and digging deep into muscle.
He recognised the survivable wound for what it was, but knew he couldn't afford to bear it.
Crow’s decision came just half a heartbeat before his Glimpse of the future ended, and by the time he heard the clicking and scraping once more his dodge had already begun.
The javelin of iron missed him by centimetres, air whipping his flesh in its wake. The sound it made upon bouncing from the wall amid spitting debris was buried by Crow’s next Glimpse.
Four more grey streaks tore through the air as metal caught light. Four more sharp cracks bled into creaks as their own momentum left them bending under fracturing stone.
He rolled, beneath another. Sidestepped two more. One Glimpse showed him engulfed in a pillar of flame, shaking Crow so much that he’d barely begun to move as it ended and leaving him stumbling from the searing blanket with singed hair.
The lines of pressure-trips gave way to the unbroken smoothness of cut stone, and Crow barely even noticed the change as his final Glimpse came too late by the blink of his eye. The javelin struck his shoulder, richocheting from his bone and tearing on ahead as it turned his rush for safety into a stumble.
Knees touching the ground, lungs drinking the room, Crow’s relieved pants mingled with the echoey remains of the metallic clatter.
It was a thrilling freedom, to have stared death in the face, yet Crow recognised how little of the euphoric cocktail spicing his blood was natural. Pried reluctant fingers from eager magic.
He slumped as the artificial courage and calm left him, then straightened up anew as the survivor’s thrill doubled in the absence of Manamicist apathy. Crow’s laughter came just as footsteps clapped in his ears behind him.
“Are you alright?” Asked Ethi, concern threading her voice.
She knelt next to him and Crow turned, wincing as the motion sent a line of hot pain running along his shoulder.
“Shit.” She muttered, apparently finding his whimper a satisfactory answer.
More movement came behind Crow, denied to his eyes by the pained protests each fractional turn of his head brought.
“Let me see it.” Unity demanded. A moment later fire and acid kissed the gash, stealing Crow’s breath into a gasp and seizing his every muscle.
“Good,” Unity muttered, “The bone’s still intact. Lucky.”
Pressure disappeared from his arm, taking the ropes of pain with it, and Crow realised his teammate had been squeezing down on the wound.
“Can you stand?”
He turned to Ethi, nodding despite the sudden weariness that threatened to overwhelm him and forcing his way from the ground.
When he straightened, it became clear to him that his teammate’s stares were tinged with more than just concern and relief.
“What are you looking at?” He asked, suddenly self conscious.
“Nothing.” Ethi said quickly.
“Your eyes.” Replied Unity, at the exact same moment.
A silence swelled between them as Crow realised what was coming.
Crow’s eyes had been green from the day of his birth, yet it wasn’t until his eighth year that they had manifested the tell-tale runic marks across their irises and betrayed their true nature.
“I thought I recognised that pattern.” Ethi muttered.
Unity only grinned.
“I knew I did. Rora Kasta’s eyes have it in exactence, and I spent just enough time actually looking at them to take note.”
“Let’s keep moving.” Crow cut in, starting down the hall. Unity followed with Ethi, but kept speaking as though no interruption had come.
“Neramis, eh? At our age? Pit. I’d heard the stories, but still…”
Crow felt his face burn, glancing at the boy from the corner of his eye.
“I just avoided a few traps, barely. It’s nothing so significant as you’re making out.”
“You avoided them before they even became a threat. How did you even do that? What was it like?”
Unity spoke without suspicion, seemingly unfazed at being lied to even as he saw through it. His concern seemed exclusively academic.
Having no urge to be interrogated, Crow looked to Ethi for support. His heart sank as he saw her mirroring Unity’s look.
“I’d like to know that too.” The girl said, quiet.
Crow looked between them, feeling suddenly trapped.
“Why?” He said at last. “So your plans might be just a hair better set for when we come to blows?”
Something flashed in her eye, the same something he’d seen when the girl had snapped at Unity.
“Alright then.” She said, cold enough to chill ice.
They walked for no more than ten paces before her voice rang out again.
“So that’s how you’re able to use your Neramis ability, yes? Or is it just coincidence that those symbols on your eyes light up when you used it?”
Somehow the question seemed no less trapped than the hallway Crow had bled in, yet he found himself answering regardless.
“That’s right.” He said. Slowly, hesitantly.
No outburst came, but the frost in Ethi’s eyes deepened. From frozen pondwater to a sterile glacier.
“Right. I just wanted to make sure.” She glanced at Unity, then back to Crow. “Still want me to share? I understand if you do, it must be so hard not having every possible advantage.”
“If you wouldn’t mind.” The artificial purred.
The tension grew between them ever more, though between his exhaustion and wound Crow found it hard to care. When the sounds that had first drawn them through the fissure rang out once more, it was almost a relief.
“I hear them again.” Crow announced, scrutinising the sounds.
“So do I.” Said Unity. “Though I’m not sure why we stopped hearing them to begin with. Perhaps some magical mechanism to relay the sounds to us, lure us in?”
“Reeks of a trap.” Ethi mused. The speed with which confrontation and fury dropped from her left Crow slumping with relief, though her suspicion surprised him.
“You think they’d set two in a row?” He asked.
Unity answered for her.
“Absolutely. Though whether they have now… I’m less sure.”
Louder by the step, Crow found the sounds separating into multiple, crisp and easily distinguished. Clattering and grunting, cracking and breathing. A grotesque yet familiar peculiarity.
It was only after another two score yards that he recognised the sounds of cutlery against platter and tooth against tongue.
Saliva flooded his mouth, and his pace quickened by a hair. He became aware of a hunger that had evaded his notice even as it drove him on, as if he might find it sated ahead.
Minutes later they came to an archway leading into another chamber, the awaiting sight leaving him breathless.
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[https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1150390957318099024/1150460446449598464/31.png?width=885&height=498]Sample of Survey Carried out by the Udrebam institute of Relations, Taikan Women, Circa 1,195 I.E.
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