[participant in the Royal Road Writathon challenge]
When Mikko and I reached adolescence and obtained our Classes, his parents warned us that most activities requiring the cover of darkness weren’t worth our time. We didn’t always listen, but I still remember their warnings against making unwise choices. As I sneak out of the back window of my little cabin, a quarter glass before midnight, I hope that our escape from Silaraon is one of the rare exceptions to their sensible rule.
I can still picture the amused glint in Reijo’s eyes as we complained about a strict curfew. His voice echoes in my mind: Nothing good happens in the middle of the night. Trust me; I’m an expert in bad choices and harsh life lessons. That’s how I got all this grey hair!
Smiling fondly at the memory, I crouch down behind the little outbuilding near my cabin, taking stock of my surroundings. The late summer night is surprisingly chilly, given the warmth of daytime, and my breath fogs in front of my face. I hunch over and take off, slinking along the path low to the ground, and moderate the warmth of my breath with a restrained application of [Heat Manipulation]. I don’t want my breath to continue to fog up, just in case it’s visible in the crisp night air.
Another fear drives me, too: I have to keep my Skill use delicate and slow in hopes that no one is tailing me. If there’s an [Inquisitor] with [Manasight] or something similar, then my imagined watcher might notice the flare of a mana Skill at work. Magic is a two-edged sword, and I don’t want to cut myself through carelessness, metaphorically speaking.
I flit from tree to tree, sticking to the deep shadows. There’s only a faint sliver of a moon out tonight, which helps me feel hidden, swathed in the darkness like a cloak, but my breath still catches in my throat at every rustling leaf. I can’t shake the tremor in my hands. What if I’m laid bare before tracking Skills that my unknown pursuers might possess? If they’re following me, then there’s likely nothing I can do to escape notice; all my precautions are just theater to make myself feel better.
That still doesn’t mean I’m going to go galumphing through the forest like a galoot. No sense making their jobs easier. Get hold of yourself, Nuri.
A tense ten minutes passes more slowly than I’ve ever imagined possible as I creep from one moss-covered tree trunk to the next, feeling my way through the sparse forest like a rodent trying to hide from a hawk.
Is this my life now, on the run and jumping at shadows? I don’t like it. As much as I hate to think about it, part of me wonders if the anxiety is worth the trade off. When does it end? When will I let myself enjoy the very freedom I’m pursuing? My gut twists, and I cut off the line of thought before it festers any more. I can’t live in constant fear of discovery. That kind of paranoia will poison every joy and accomplishment in my future. I won’t be able to focus and do my best in Grand Ile if I’m always looking over my shoulder, afraid of being caught.
Twin emotions war within my breast. I pause behind a particularly gnarled tree trunk, my fingers brushing the whorls and hard ridges of the bark as I contemplate my current behavior. I’m sneaking about like a rat, a vile, hidden creature in love with the shadows. The act itself makes me feel guilty, although I know my cause is right. Isn’t it? I can almost hear Tem’s voice in my head. Nonetheless, actions define you. Feelings follow.
Underneath the quivering fear, however, a second sensation starts to rise. The strident drumbeat of adventure pounds in my chest, resonant among my rib bones. A thrill races through me, and I shiver—not from dread or the chill of night, but from the rush of adrenaline. I’m more than a sneak. I am more than a thief. I clench my jaw, my resolve growing. I am the hope of a far off peace, of ending this war bloodlessly. I need answers, but I’m more interested in healing the realms than destroying them.
I can build something new, something better. That’s the impulse that drives me onward now. After all, I am a budding [Architect of Unseen Worlds]. Although the way forward remains hidden to me, I will find a path. I nod slowly to myself. I will find the truth of the world, and I will build something new from the old.
The soft hoot of an owl behind me makes me flinch in fear. My breathing jerks to a halt, and every muscle in my body locks in place, rigid with terror at the bird call. I collapse to the loam of the forest floor, pressing myself against the roots of the tree, my face buried in the soft, wet leaves still left over from last fall’s shedding. The mold is thick around the tree trunk, musty with the smell of age and decay.
I will my body to be silent and still and small, as though I can make myself invisible by the sheer force of wishing hard enough. I’ve always made fun of the storytellers and bards who use hyperbolic language. Instead of laughing at the phrase, “his skin crawled right off,” I’m all too keenly aware in this dark, terrifying moment exactly what they mean. I tense up, awaiting the inevitability of the end in case it was a signal from an [Inquisitor] instead of just a bird—
And nothing happens.
After a long moment, I raise my head and look around. Quiet woodland sounds wash over me, but otherwise all is calm. I risk a quick scan with my [Manasight], and my beating heart finally grows tranquil again when I return no sign of mana use. I am alone, pursued only in my inner thoughts.
I continue on my way to the rendezvous site, no longer confident, but still committed to my task. Wariness is exhausting. Capture is worse.
To my great relief, the others are early. They’re already waiting for me when I reach the meeting site. The entire team is here—our last-minute inclusion Rakesh as well, his face grim but resolute—and they’re sporting packed bags and traveling clothes. They’re all outfitted in practical clothing for a midnight escape, clad in dark tones and doing their best to camouflage their mana signatures.
We look like a right proper bunch of ruffians. I grin madly at the sight of my comrades, and once again the siren song of adventure hums in my chest. We’re off to save the world, and we look stylish while we’re doing it. What more could we ask for?
Padouk loads our gear into his wagon with practiced ease, and our bags seem to fairly fly into nooks and crannies among his wares. I recognize a Skill in action, but he keeps fine control over his mana, and there’s barely a glimmer to give him away while he activates the ability. Soon, all of our gear is packed in without any wasted space or time, and strangely, the wagon still seems to have room for more. A solid, useful Skill for a [Merchant] on the go.
We set off at a brisk pace, but despite our haste we make little noise. Even the horses are quiet. I squint through the darkness, studying the horses as best I can. Padouk has wrapped their hooves in some sort of sackcloth, and it muffles each footstep as the beasts of burden haul us out of town and down an old, winding goat path. Rather than the clop-clop of hoof beats, all I hear is the soft, muted patter of their plodding, like gentle rain on a rooftop.
The steady rhythm is hypnotic and strangely comforting, as though it’s telling me that everything will be all right in the end. You’ll make it out safely. You have nothing more to fear. My breath is shaky as I fight off another surge of adrenaline. I desperately wish I could believe that all is well, but until we’re in Grand Ile, I won’t rest easy.
No one speaks for another few hours, keeping our peace until we’re well out of town. No one seems willing to risk conversation in case it gives away our position. We finally stop by an old stream bed, long since dried out. The sandy walls of the gully are crumbling and provide poor footing for us while we scramble down to the bottom. The wagon lists to the side, sliding on the loose scree, and I clench my fists in helpless fear.
At a commanding phrase from Padouk, however, the horses and the wagon stabilize and right themselves. The wagon and all our gear inside it lowers down securely to the old creek bed, as sure and precise as though guided by ropes and pulleys.
“Neat Skill,” I say, nodding in the [Merchant]’s direction. “I’m always curious to see various Classes in action. It’s exciting to see so many different routes to power. Ezio and Tem both drove that point home, but it’s fascinating to see a tangible reminder like that.”
My voice sounds too loud in the stillness, but people seem relieved that I deem us far enough from the city to relax rather than remain tense and suspicious. By speaking aloud so nonchalantly, it’s as though I’m giving permission for everyone to lift our self-imposed vows of silence. Sensibly, the team keeps the chatter down to a bare minimum, but everyone’s breathing easier, a tacit admission that we’re out of immediate danger. With the suffocating weight lifted from our shoulders, everyone subconsciously picks up the pace, and soon we’re moving along at a light jog.
“I’m not picking up any mana signatures. I’m fairly confident that we’re out of the worst of it, but let’s keep on guard just in case,” I say it to the team. I turn toward our guide, smiling at the confident, competent presence he projects as he strides through the night. “How about you, Padouk? Have you sensed any potential clientele nearby? Or are we truly alone out here in this vast wilderness?”
The crafty [Merchant] shakes his head, glancing around him in a quick survey of our surroundings before committing to a final answer. “Nothing so far, Nuri. I think we’re happily solitary for the moment. Keep your eyes open, though. That goes for all of us. We’re not out of the woods yet—no pun intended.”
A faint ripple of laughter spreads through the group at the shameless pun, bolstering our morale. Everyone seems to be taking our escape in stride, although Rakesh’s face is slick with a buildup of sweat, which shimmers on his forehead in the scant moonlight. The poor [Secretarial Researcher] is breathing more heavily than I would expect given our rather light exertion up to this point, but perhaps it’s not fair to judge his fitness against our own. We’ve been training like madmen for the last few months, but I wasn’t exactly a paragon of athleticism before my time with Tem inspired me to temper my body the old fashioned way.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
I know Rakesh spends most of his days at the Silaraon City Academy, his head buried in a stack of books, but an hour or two of walking shouldn’t put him out of breath this quickly, right? Maybe I would have felt the same before my recent exercising. It’s hard to say. I watch him from the corner of my eye, trying not to stare and make him feel more uncomfortable than he already appears. He’s clutching his pack, his fingers relentlessly throttling the padded straps around his shoulders, and I feel a rush of sympathy as I realize he is utterly terrified.
I slow my pace slightly, dropping back to match Rakesh stride for stride. For a while, I simply look around the forest, admiring the old growth of massive tree trunks thick with ivy. As we settle into a comfortable march, I catch his eye and quirk a half-smile, just enough to let him know that we’re in this together.
“I don’t know how you’re so composed,” Rakesh says, shaking his head. His shoulders are hunched, and he’s trudging along like a prisoner on a one way trip to the salt mines. “I’m a nervous wreck! I envy your bravery.”
“Bravery?” I snort, which makes him glance at me sharply, as though I’ve offended him by minimizing his worry, and I wrestle down a spike of guilt. “I’m just as nervous as you are, Rakesh. I don’t think any of us have a clue what we’re doing. We’re all out of our depth, so don’t feel like the odd one out. None of us have ever done anything quite like this before, but we’re a team. Whatever happens next, we succeed or fail together. There’s no need to be afraid.”
Slow, percussive clapping echoes through the night. I spin around, craning my neck and squinting to see the top of the creek bed in the dim starlight. A man in the unmistakable garb of the [Inquisitors] looms over us. He stops clapping and launches into a speech.
“How touching. My deepest apologies, deserters, but it’s simply not true that there’s no reason to be afraid. [Behold, I Am Come]. [Tremble in my Presence]!”
My mind stutters and freezes up at his audacious words, fuzzing and going white with sudden, catatonic terror. My limbs refuse to move when I try to turn around and run. My legs and arms are heavy and leaden, caught in the grip of his bombastic sounding Skills. I bite the inside of my cheek, falling back on old tricks to free myself from the trap, but the Skill doesn’t break. I shake, falling to my knees and pleading incoherently for him to spare us, although some rational part of my brain knows that I’m suffering from some sort of fear-based mental attack and that it’s not natural to wallow in abject terror.
A dozen men step forward from the forest on all sides, encircling us in a net of heavily armored [Inquisitors]. Their leader lifts his helmet’s visor, revealing his face. He bares his teeth in a wolfish grin, and while the Skill fades, I still shudder at the sudden surge of power churning in his unveiled mana signature.
He leaps down to the sandy bed, landing in a small explosion of dirt and rocks, sticks and old leaves. He flashes me his savage grin once more, then turns to Padouk without another word for me, as though I don’t matter to him in the least. And maybe I don’t. The royal army is used to dealing with bigger prizes by far.
“Your blood price, [Merchant],” the [Inquisitor] leader calls out, tossing a small leather bag at Padouk. The clink the bag makes when Padouk catches it leaves no doubt that he’s been bought and paid for with royal coin.
With a stiff bow, Padouk disappears the money bag into a hidden pocket in his cloak. He speaks in a low, ominous tone. “[Threefold Investment: Reap What you Sow].”
“No!” Melina screams now that we can all move on our own accord again. She clutches at his vest with her hands, her face contorted into a mask of rage as she glances back and forth between the [Inquisitors] and her beau. “Let him go. Tell me that this is all a mistake! And you! I trusted you, Padouk! Why are you doing this to him—to me?”
Padouk shrugs Melina off, backpedaling quickly away from the distraught [Gaffer]. He opens his mouth as though to respond, his face sad and shaded in the bleak moonlight. Then his features harden into something harsh and desperate. He sneers and turns away on his heel. His strides don’t falter as he retreats toward the wagon, leaving Melina wailing in anguish, all alone in the dirt.
Just before he reaches the horses, he whirls back around, his jaw working heavily as a complicated series of expressions run across his face. “I don’t expect you to understand, Melina. Everything is simple and easy for you. But I’m a [Merchant]. I always take the [Superior Deal]!”
While everyone is caught up in the drama, I leap up and yell for my friends to run. No one moves, though, and in the next breath I nonsensically tell the [Inquisitors] that they have nothing to do with anything, babbling as I search for a way to save them from sharing my fate.
“Please. Just let them go,” I beg, trembling at the sight of my friends roughly bound and chained. The squad of [Inquisitors] have already slapped mana-suppressing collars on Avelina and Mikko, which is probably a prudent move on their part. Ava would burn them in an instant, although Mikko doesn’t need his Skills to crush them with his hulking hammer.
I sink back down to my knees, listless and weak. I huddle in a ball on the rocky dirt of the river bed, and my head slumps down to my chest. I watch our brief hope of freedom slip through our fingers, but I can’t look away. A strange sense of gratitude burns in my heart. My friends are here for me. They all knew the risk, but they came along anyway. Somehow, the certainty that I have good friends—no, family—blunts the sting of failure.
“Some dreams die before they’re even born,” the captain of the [Inquisitors] grates at me in his rough voice. He explodes into motion, moving so fast I only see the flickering afterimage, and kicks me in my back. I slam down face first into the dirt, cutting my forehead on a rock and blinking back tears. Twigs and old leaves tangle in my beard, and I’m spitting up dirt.
He wrestles my hands behind me with inexorable strength. My struggles are so useless it’s almost comical. He slaps cold chains on my wrists. Once again I writhe in his grasp, fighting to wrench myself free, but he’s pressing down on me with more weight than humanly possible, his knee twisting into my spine with unrelenting pressure.
With a grunt, I go limp, surrendering to the inevitable truth of our failed escape. We’ve been captured; no amount of indignation or struggle will change that reality. As my face grinds into the dirt, it’s all I can do to hold back a wicked grin.
=+=
A flare of blinding light makes my eyes water. I’m still blinking away tears, trying to see where I’ve awoken after the [Inquisitors] put me to sleep with a suppressing Skill, when I hear a voice that I recognize all too well. The [Adjutant] and I are far from friends, but after the uncomfortable intimacy of our interrogation session, I’d know the sound of his voice anywhere.
“Did you really think my eyes and ears are so blind and deaf? Ahhh, I can see it in your eyes, taste it in your fear, Nuri.” He smiles mirthlessly, and my vision clears enough to see the cruel twist to his thin lips.
He shakes his head at me. “You really believed that you could slip away under the cover of night. You actually thought that you, a young crafter barely across his first Threshold, could outwit the best the [Inquisitors] have to offer. Densmore suffers no fools; yet somehow, you had either the boldness or the stupidity—I can’t tell which one is less embarrassing—to challenge the might of the royal army. That tells me that something else is afoot. It tells me that you are more than what you seem.”
A lie springs to my lips, and I’m about to spew misdirection in hopes of wreaking havoc with the [Adjutant]’s recall Skills. Before I can get a word out, however, he flings out a palm, and a dense weave of mana closes around my mouth, clamping down and silencing me. We stare at each other in the flickering torchlight for a moment before he cracks a wan smile.
“Don’t bother with dissembling, Nuri. Right now, I’m actually inclined to be charitable. Do you know why? No? It’s because there’s more to you than meets the eye. Don’t ruin things for yourself by acting churlish. The less you say right now, the better. Do we understand each other well enough? But trust me when I say that I’ll gladly give you enough rope to hang yourself if you insist on being pigheaded.”
“Please just let me go,” I say when he releases the silencing Skill. I discard the grand lies and speak simply from the heart, although I doubt he’ll be moved. He’s a cold snake, this one. I stare down at the ground, refusing to meet his hypnotic gaze in case he tries to influence me unduly. “Honestly? I just want to be left alone.”
The [Adjutant] snorts in derision. “Left alone? There’s not a chance of that happening anymore, Nuri. No, you’re valuable to me now. That’s why I’m taking you with me. I can’t wait until we depart this forsaken patch of wilderness in the wastelands and return to proper civilization in the capital.”
I flinch. “What do you mean, leaving? What about the war? You’re taking me to the capital?” I ask the [Adjutant] in a jumbled daze, the words spilling out all on top of each other as I try to process the news. Panic rises in my chest like the off-gassing of fumes from a furnace, making me light-headed and weak. “I don’t know anything useful. Please believe me. I can’t help in your war. I just want to be left alone—I had to get away.”
“Then you should have simply followed through with our deal,” the [Adjutant] snaps. His velvety tones disappear, and he crosses his arm and glares at me through narrowed eyes. “We aren’t staying long in Silaraon, as I said. A month or two of fighting, at most, until we beat back those bloody wraiths. Then you would have been released from service while the [General] marched back to the capital to be feted and honored by all the adoring crowds.”
The [Adjutant] breaks off with a shake of his head, a strangely intense gleam in his eyes as he examines me. “Do you know why that can’t happen now? You pulled one over on me. I don’t know how you did it, Nuri, but somehow you sidestepped my best Skill. I’m not even angry. Oh no, not at all! No, I’m afraid it’s much worse for you. I’m intrigued, you see. So now I’m taking you back as a gift to my mentor. She’ll enjoy pulling you apart and extracting all your dark little secrets. By the time she’s through with you, you’ll wish you’d died in that Rift.”
He turns abruptly, stalks out of the cell with the torch in hand, and slams the heavy iron door behind him. The door clangs shut ominously, plunging my world into darkness.
I grope blindly through the pitch blackness until I find a wall. My fingers slide across the rough stone surface, following the lines of the bricks. I reach the corner, counting my paces, and turn to trace out the rest of the little cell. Two short paces in each direction. Barely enough space to stretch out for sleep. No bed that I can find, just a thin blanket in a corner next to a chamber pot. No chair. No food tray, either.
I grimace at the thought of stinking up the place by being forced to use the chamber pot like an uncouth barbarian, but at least it will serve to keep guards away. I suppose the lack of plumbing in this wing of the barracks works in my favor. They won’t like the smell any more than I do, but I’ll learn to adapt.
No windows. No way to tell where I’m held in the barracks. I grind my teeth, annoyed that I’m working with hardly any information. Escape feels unlikely, but that doesn’t stop me from taking stock of my situation and formulating a plan. I have no intention of going to the capital, at least not on the [Adjutant]’s terms. I punch one fist into the palm of my other hand. If I go to the capital city one day, then it will be my choice. I refuse to dance to someone else’s tune.
I breathe in deeply to clear my mind, and start to put together the few details that I know. I’m in an old, interior room, devoid of plumbing, so it’s probably in the basement of the original construction. There are service lifts in the back, if I remember, still in use for deliveries. If I can make it past the iron door, then the lifts will be my first destination. All I have to do is deal with the pesky guards.
I inch forward with my hands outstretched, and bump into the door. My Skills are still restrained, but I can faintly make out its composition if I strain to use the analytical portion of my [Architect of Unseen Worlds] Skill. I slow my breathing, focusing on controlling the faint, sluggish vestiges of mana in my system, and begin the slow work of understanding and then unraveling the door.
They may have captured me, imprisoned my body, and drained away my mana, but my mind is free. They can never take that away from me. In the darkness, my grim smile grows.