Saphora glares at me, a vein throbbing at her temple as we make eye contact. She gives me the coldest smile I’ve ever seen, but it only lasts for a split second. Her expression softens into an affectionate gaze by the time she turns to Mender Shiphrah. She’s like an emotional chameleon, blending in perfectly.
“Aunty, who’s your new patient? I don’t remember meeting him before,” Saphora says.
“This is Nuri, a fascinating young man with a shattered core and shredded channels. He has some clever method to use mana anyway. Isn’t that marvelous? Simply marvelous!”
“Extraordinary. You always find the most interesting cases, Aunty. Can you handle this on your own, or will you require my healing services?” Saphora asks. “ I’m always happy to help my family!”
“I believe we’ll take care of everything, thank you,” Rashad says blandly, though his eyes narrow a fraction.
“Oh? His treatment is entirely metaphysical?”
“Just so,” Shiphrah says, patting her niece on the arm. “I know you’re talented, but this is not your domain. Leave the work to this little old lady.”
Saphora smiles and nods, superficially pleasant, but her knuckles are white as she grips the platter and darts out of the room. In a way, that’s reassuring to me. She’s not working at the behest of her aunt. Probably. That means I won’t have to turn against Shiphrah, too.
Well, who knows. I hope not.
We eat in relative silence. Every few moments, Shiphrah makes some comment about a past visit to some far-off place, to which Rashad invariably replies with a noncommittal murmur. He seems disengaged from the conversation, and every once in a while he releases a subtle working of mana, although I don’t dare risk activating my own Viewing and tipping him off that I can sense everything he does and easily pierce straight past his own clumsy veil. Even Azariah was more skilled at shielding himself from view.
Shiphrah stands up abruptly, brushing crumbs off her frock. “Lovely meal! Always a good portent to start with eating together. Now, Nuri, why don’t you tell us how you found yourself in such a precarious situation? Don’t leave anything out!”
I leave out plenty.
Starting with the Rift, and ignoring their curiosity about how I ended up in a lesser Rift on my own in the first place, I explain how I closed the incursion by turning the powerful wild mana in the Rift’s core against itself. Their eyes grow wide as I recount the way I melted my Skills in a desperate attempt to vent the power that burned off my hand and carved an enormous tunnel through the metaphysical realm, right across my chest.
“Young man, you should not be alive. Consider yourself fortunate,” Rashad says, looking at me with an expression that’s uncomfortably close to admiration.
“I do,” I assure him.
He doesn’t seem convinced. If anything, his frown grows deeper. “We’ve seen all sorts of grotesque accidents. No one has lived long in such a state. You must understand, our window to save someone after encountering such a tragedy is quite brief. Measured in minutes most of the time, if not seconds. Despite our best ministrations and high-ranking Skills, only a small handful have survived, let alone recovered anything approaching their previous abilities.”
“Oh, don’t scare the boy, Rashad. Don’t scare him! We’ll have him recovered again in no time, I know it. I know it! I’ve got a good feeling about this one.”
Rashad’s lips flatten into a thin line. He glances at his sister from the corner of his eye, clearly unimpressed by her pronouncement. “You said this happened over a year ago?”
I nod in confirmation.
“Yet here you are, hale and whole, apart from your hand. Earlier, you stopped me from getting a proper diagnosis. Why and how?”
I take off my necklace of glass orbs, though I don’t dare let go of them. “After closing the Rift, mana manipulation was incredibly painful. I practiced soaking my body and soul in mana every single day, however, no matter how agonizing. I’ve made a habit of this for a few years, and it seems to have helped me survive. Eventually, I made this, a sort of external reservoir of mana that I can use to empower my Skills by manually feeding the mana into the runic arrays in the Skill structures directly, bypassing my shredded channels.”
Mender Shiphrah reaches for the thick necklace, but I hold it back. “Apologies. I don’t like to give it up. Creating this was incredibly difficult, and I’d rather not part with it.”
“You are a crafter?”
“I’m a [Glassworker],” I say, pride bleeding into my voice. “Learning to imbue this is what catapulted me into the ranks of the Masters.”
The siblings share a glance laden with meaning that I can’t quite parse. Rashad runs his fingers through his hair, then lets out a heavy sigh. “You’re a curiosity indeed. Is there anything you can’t do?”
“Plenty. I can’t use the Skills that melted in the Rift. Expanding my Capacity, apart from creating a better pseudo-core, is out of the question. Harvesting and using mana is still painful for me in the extreme. I’ve grown used to it, but I’d rather not continue like this.”
“May I scan you again? Please don’t resist this time.” Rashad asks. His eyes narrow, but not in antagonism; he genuinely seems confused by me. “How many years since you hit the First Threshold?”
“You may. I won’t overreact this time,” I say, smiling and trying not to look too smug. “I hit the First Threshold last year. Why?”
A familiar wave of mana and intent washes over me. I resist the temptation to lock out the Viewing, like Azariah used to do with me when I got over-eager to see what was going on in his core space. Instead, I let the Viewing take hold and scan my interior, which is when I realize that it’s not a true Viewing. It feels like an upgraded version of the Menders Sounding, in fact. That’s a neat trick, since it doesn’t require bodily contact. I’ll have to see if I can copy it so that I can teach it to Lionel later.
“Incredible. Your interior space is, well, cavernous, if you don’t mind me saying so. If you weren’t so young, I’d suspect that you’d hit the Second Threshold last year, not the First. Quite frankly, I’ve never seen such wonderful mana density before in anyone still in the First Threshold. Your Skills are also far more robust than they ought to be. I don’t understand what any of them do, other than one that appears to be heat-related. I’ve never seen the rest of them before, and I assure you that I have seen a great deal more than most.”
I’d be surprised if he had come across [Vitrification], since I made it myself. Even [Sanctuary of Glass] is most likely extremely rare, since it required so much external mana, not to mention extraordinary circumstances. I bite my tongue, opting not to say anything about it. The less they know about my rare ability to artificially patch together and modify Skills with customized runic arrays, the better. They may seem kind so far, but I’m not as foolish as I used to be. Plus the pair of them are related to Saphora! Still, I can’t shake the surprise that he thinks my inner world is larger than it should be for my advancement.
I scratch my chin through my thick beard, considering his words. “Does that mean that I can immediately rank up to the next Threshold if you’re able to fix me?”
“Immediately? Likely not,” Rashad hedges. “Your Skills are a bit sparse. I’d expect you to fill up your soul prior.”
“Oh? I know a man with only a single Skill,” I say, thinking of the [Mimic Mage] I met with back in Grand Ile. “That hasn’t held him back from the ranks.”
“There’s some debate there,” Shiphrah says when her brother doesn’t reply right away. “I have yet to see a person develop enough potency to continue advancing with only a single Skill, but that’s separate from your potential. Think of it this way: imagine you go to a tavern, and the barkeep rolls out three casks for a party. That’s a lot of potential! The problem is that the casks contain weak and sour wine that no one wants to drink. What a disappointment. What a dissapointment! Truly tragic, if you’re an oenophile like I am. That’s low potency, in this example.”
“Helpful way to think about it,” I say, grinning at the thought of someone like Shiphrah at a common tavern.
“Usually, there’s a bit of variation between the casks. Some are stronger, some weaker. We work with very few hard and fast rules. But if your potency isn’t high enough, then you’ll not rank up, despite the size of your soul. That’s wasted potential, sadly. Wasted potential.”
I hum thoughtfully. “Is that why people tend to bottleneck just before the Second Threshold? They have an unequal amount of Skill quality?”
The siblings exchange glances again. Rashad holds up a hand and puts on a hard look. His sister slowly closes her mouth, although she pouts about it. He turns to me and offers a tight smile. “Unfortunately, we’ll have to stop your questions there. Research into these matters is tightly controlled. We’d rather not lose our funding. Please accept our sincere apologies.”
A detail clicks into place. “Is that what the warehouses are all around this district? You’ve each got assigned research topics?”
“Entirely too perceptive! Entirely,” Shaphirah mutters under her breath, busying herself with a cup of tea.
“The noble houses of Gilead were each charged with a research topic many generations ago,” Rashad says in a halting voice. “Most did not succeed. Only the Menders emerged with any credibility after the first century of experiments wrapped up. Beyond that, I can’t say much. But, yes, this district is the primary reason Gilead has been so dominant in Densmoran politics for so long.”
“What’s below us is secondary?”
They both flinch, confirming my suspicions. We’re sitting atop a secured Rift. Cleared of any monsters, it’s constantly releasing mana into the environment, increasing the energy density of the city and improving mana recovery rates for the researchers.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Better you don’t ask,” Rashad says stiffly, although a slight grin tugs at the corner of his lips. “I can only divulge so many secrets to an outsider, you understand. Now, let’s work on that core. Sister?”
Shiphrah gulps down the last of the tea and smiles at me radiantly, practically quivering with excitement. She walks over to my seat and taps a small, round button on the side of the chair. Within a few seconds, the chair reclines to form a bed that’s surprisingly comfortable.
“This won’t take long, Nuri. Rashad will do his best to keep you in good health, just in case there are unintended consequences. Thanks to him, I haven’t lost a patient yet—at least not during the initial triage! He’s one of the most talented mundane Menders on the continent! Wonderful, isn’t it? Simply wonderful.”
My panicked response is lost as she places a hand on my chest, right below my rib cage, and my world flashes white with unimaginable torment.
=+=
I float in a sea of luminous nothingness.
Surrounded by points of light that wink out of existence if I try to focus on them, I drift in the ether, unmoored from time.
Mana. The light is mana.
The realization feels important, although I can’t seem to place why. There’s something in the liminal space that feels like home, that makes me want to nestle into it and sleep in endless peace.
Danger! my mind hisses.
I fight back against the impulse to drift away forever, steadily retaking control of my mind and soul.
Slowly, in fits and starts, memory bleeds back into me. I blink without eyes, separated from a body. I’m not here in person. This is my inner world. My soul. But if that’s the case, then where are my Skills? Where are all of the runes that I’ve painstakingly memorized over the last year?
Ah. Right. Expansion.
I cast out my consciousness, searching for anything to latch onto in the void. There’s a faint current, pulling me onward. Without any other landmarks or indication of where to go or what to do, I follow the flow, although I can’t tell where I’m headed.
The last thing I can clearly remember is the grandmotherly warmth on Shiphrah’s face before the world exploded into the worst agony of my life.
As I hold that thought in mind, more mana joins the light, reinforcing my awareness of myself. It’s cool but not bitter cold, like taking a refreshing drink on a hot Summer’s day. Dimly, I sense my body—my real body—stitching itself back together. I don’t know what pulled it apart, but that’s a problem for another time.
Rashad promised to keep me alive.
Dimly, that thought worms into my consciousness. I decide to believe that his promise is trustworthy. If Mender Uttara meant me harm, or if the strange siblings wanted to hurt me, they could have done it in a thousand other ways than sending soothing mana through me. The more I think about what happened, the more my mind makes connections again.
I relax. This is no different from Scalpel delving into my soul, although I suspect Shiphrah has better intentions. But I’m not helpless anymore. I understand how to break free; now that I’m cognizant of what’s happening again, I can technically take control of this at any time. Although, now that I think about it, I’m not inclined to interrupt what she’s doing right now. I don’t want to inadvertently break anything.
Well, break things worse.
Now that my cognizance is returning to normal, I turn my perception toward the direction in which I’m traveling. For an indeterminate time, nothing changes at all. There is simply a vast and comfortable darkness, shot through with glowing stars—small streaks of mana, flitting about like fireflies.
Before me, after what feels like a short eternity, an infinitesimal speck appears. Flat and insignificant at first, it grows in my mind, swelling in size as I rush closer, ever closer. How long I draw near, I know not. Yet the lackluster spot continues to grow and grow and grow, until at last it’s no longer small, but immense in a way that defies all logic. It fills the entire horizon, cracked and strangely subdued despite dominating my universe.
The closer I move to the enormous expanse, the more mournful I feel. My core, which is the only thing this mangled monstrosity could be, appears inanimate and dull. It exists beyond the realm of matter, yet not solely in the realm of the metaphysical, since it must connect with my body, much like a beast core. It overlaps both realms, yet no longer interacts with either. All the connections that should exist, enlivening me, are inert and dry.
As Shiphrah’s mana touches the core, spreading out wider and wider in an attempt to encircle it completely, a deep and terrible shudder runs through the fractured core. Searing pain shoots throughout me, from everywhere all at once. Unending and unrelenting, it burns me all over again—I am in the lesser Rift once more, clutching the crystalline ball of the Rift core and destroying myself from the inside out, reliving the agony and horror again and again.
Panic shoots through me as I watch the mana slow its spread. We won’t be able to cover the entire core. Unless my calculations are off, Mender Sphiphrah’s mana is a fount of healing, but it’s not inexhaustible. She won’t be able to finish the work. And if it’s not completed, where does that leave me?
No. I refuse.
Anger rips through me, hot and indignant. I reach out through the ether, relying on my [Arcane Domain] to navigate the void, and find my glass pseudo cores on my real body. Tapping into them gives me a rush of instant relief, and I fling my mana toward the mana emanating from Shiphrah. Buttressing up her work, I join the full force of my artificial Capacity to hers. While my current state prevents me from Viewing what she’s doing with her Skills, I don’t need to copy her efforts. All I need to do is encase the core, ensuring that there’s an unbroken covering of mana.
Falling back on every trick I’ve learned, I deftly weave my mana into hers, stretching out the net and enveloping my core in energy. My fractured core drinks it greedily, like the parched ground in the Barrens when the storms opened overhead, but nothing changes.
On and on the mana spools out, soaking the core in wave after wave of Shiphrah’s will and intent. Her Skill drains my mana until my glass cores are dry, and still my true core takes in more energy, never satisfied and still cracked.
At long last, the Mender runs out. Her Skill gutters like a candle with no fuel to burn.
Everything goes black.
What feels like eons later, I blink, falling out of the metaphysical space and back into my body. Shivering on the reclining chair, I reach up and mop away the sweat from my brow.
I hate the complete absence of mana. I can’t warm myself up by drawing in the thermal energy around me. I’ve gotten used to the feeling in the past, but for years [Heat Manipulation] was my only companion. Without it, I feel almost naked.
Exposed. Vulnerable. Alone.
Shiphrah staggers back to her seat and falls into it with a decidedly undelicate grunt of exhaustion and frustration. She’s shaking, too, utterly drained, and her cheerful disposition has evaporated like the first frost before a heat wave at harvest time.
“I have never encountered anything like that,” Shiphrah says at last. She lifts trembling fingers up to her head and rubs her temples. “We will have to reevaluate how we approach your convalescence. Please refrain from any mana use for at least forty-eight hours. Your soul needs time to recuperate.”
“Very well. When I come again, I’ll bring extra cores. My friends will have to carry them, since they create a cascading resonance effect if they’re too close together. I will temporarily loan you a few of them so that you don’t run out of mana again.”
The siblings startle at my announcement. I might as well have claimed that I can open a Rift with a wave of my hand. After a moment, they seem to move on, however.
“What happened, sister?” Rashad asks. His voice is small. Subdued. “I haven’t seen you drained in decades. Yet there was no backlash. I barely had to do anything other than stop the internal bleeding when Nuri started thrashing.”
Wait, what?
I swallow my fear, trying to appear composed. “Thank you, Mender Rashad. I appreciate that you kept me alive. If I’d tried to fix myself on my own—well, I’d rather not think about it.”
“Nuri saved himself,” Shiphrah says. She shakes her head. “That should be impossible. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
I shrug, not wanting to explain that I have more experience with soul surgery than most people on the continent. Nor do I want to get into how my Domain allowed me to reach outside of myself while still in my liminal space. Instead, I say, “Well, I wasn’t about to let all your hard work go to waste.”
While I have them off kilter, I push for answers to the question that’s been rattling around in my mind ever since lunch. “Why did you get a Mender for an assistant? Wouldn’t it be easier to hire a [Maid] or [Chef]?”
Rashad perks up, seizing on a conversation that puts him back on more solid ground. He rolls up his sleeves and scooches forward to the edge of his seat, clearing his throat. His voice lowers conspiratorially.
“The fact of the matter is that it’s exceedingly difficult to find anyone who will work with us. This part of town has a reputation in Gilead, you see. I alluded earlier to the research done here. While the details are state secrets, the public knows the general idea of the district.”
“They’re scared,” I surmise.
“Precisely!” Rashad says, leveling a finger at me. “Even among the Menders, we have a hard time finding anyone willing to stay out here for long. One visit is usually enough, and then they put in a request for a transfer. Not sure I blame them. This place gives me the creeps every time I’m back in town. Prefer life on the road, honestly.”
“Saphira doesn’t seem to mind?”
“Saphora,” Shiphrah corrects absently. She’s twirling a finger through her thick curls, her eyes staring at something a thousand paces away.
“Er, right. Saphora doesn’t mind working out here? You said that she’s been late recently, so that implies she’s been working with you for a while. Do you go back a ways?”
Rashad chuckles. “Yes and no. Well, that’s family for you. We’ve been out of touch for a good number of years, since we’re both busy with our various projects. She’s only been with us for about two weeks. We’ll keep her on, despite the occasional tardiness, since neither of us are in Gilead for very long. My understanding is that she travels all around Densmore doing charity work. Healing the poor, and that sort of thing.”
“Admirable,” I croak out.
“Quite so, quite so,” Shiphrah chimes in. “It’s a wonderful testament to her character, so I try not to be too hard on her for bringing me food a little late. As long as my peach pastries are still warm, all is forgiven.”
“Keeping the tastebuds happy is paramount, eh? I didn’t realize that the Menders were in the business of handouts. She must have quite a high ranking if they allow her to travel and dole out healing without recompense,” I say wryly. I’m having a hard time keeping the cynicism out of my tone, but neither sibling seems to notice.
I ponder the strange news for a while, relieved that the likable duo doesn’t seem part of Saphora’s web of lies—unless they’re all in on it together. What will I do if they are? Accept their help and then stab them in the back?
Morbid thoughts churn in my mind. I squeeze my eyes shut, feeling suddenly dizzy. As it passes, I’m ashamed for leaping to the worst conclusions, and I vow to get to know them before I pass judgment. Since it’s strange to talk with them while I’m still lying down, I reach over and hit the control button to return my reclining seat to an upright position.
“Well, that was invigorating.”
“You’ve done well!” Shiphrah chimes in, beaming at me. “Apologies that I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain. We’ll do better next time. Better!”
In the end, Rashad makes me wait another few hours for observation. He sends waves of healing mana through me three more times before conceding that I’m remarkably healthy and fit for discharge. He escorts me off the property and bids me farewell once we reach the street, waving as I depart.
I wave back.“See you in two days. Let’s hope it’s more successful this time.”
He winces, and I take my leave, returning to the inn as quickly as I can. I’m anxious to tell the team what I’ve discovered, and more than a little terrified at the prospect of traveling on my own without the mana to run my [Arcane Domain]. What if Saphora attacks me on the way back, while I’m still defenseless?
Despite my worst fears, I make it back in one piece and flop down on the couch in our suite’s common room. My mind clicks into gear as I turn over the strange events. We’re likely not the only ones Saphora has targeted. Once I get Rakesh on the trail, we’ll track down all her other activities, and report her to the [Inquisitors]. They’ll put together a case and send a strike team to take her down.
Assuming she doesn’t strike first.