Lumina’s beauty could not be understated. Horse-drawn carriages and the rare automobile rolled down the wide, sweeping streets of a sprawling city fanned out across a series of Sheer-side plateaus, shaped for stability and appeal by engineers and architects. The entire thing resembled pancakes stacked and spread somewhat unevenly across a large plate representing only a tiny portion of southern Ganymede, its syrup the streams and rivers running off from the Pruinan mountain range to the north. They fell in often unisonous rows down the plateaus to the next one below, creating the world-famous Lumina Falls.

One such river, large and known as the Novare, accompanied James as he trekked home. The street block holding the Nixus residence was one of many that wrapped in a neat rectangle around a single, enormous crimson laurel tree. The laurels of Lumina competed for height with the buildings, tall and proud, of brick foundations and painted wooden majesty the likes of which Asundria had never seen until this century.

If the smokestacks of Tenebrae represented the hub of Asundrian progress and invention, the sights of Lumina showcased the hub of nature and culture intertwined. There was an art to its very people, even the ever-humble farmers dressed in expertly woven wool tailored and textured with mastery ahead of its time, riding on slender-legged horses to and from bustling markets flowing with goods from all corners of the continent. The conflicts in Proxima had disrupted some of that, but trade was still quite strong relative to the other nations affected by the fracture of the Union.

James’s family lived in a house modest for its block, extravagant by broader standards, two stories high with a gabled roof and a bright blue coat of paint. Most buildings on the block were similar, blues and pinks and greens and yellows, brightly colored, clear of grime and inviting.

He pushed open the door to find his home a battlefield.

At the family dinner table sat his mother, and across from her, his little brother, one eye blackened, hands pressed flat against his thighs. Luke sat stiffly, studying the table’s glossy surface as if he were a prisoner of war in an interrogation. It was probably not far from the truth. Even the Flocks Above would tremble in fear of Mom if they ever dared to lay a feather on her children. As James walked in, his brother lifted his head and smiled broadly.

“James!”

“Hey, Luke.”

“James Arvon Nixus,” his mother said as he entered. She rose from her chair, blonde hair tumbling down over her coarse workwoman’s shirt and overalls, and showed him her sternest— eyes hard, lips pursed, hands on her hips. He flinched at the sound of his full name spoken. That was never a good sign. She knew.

“Yes, Mom.”

“You know what you did wrong?”

“Yes, Mom.”

She folded her arms, waiting for his explanation. She’d caught on to Luke absentmindedly saying ‘yes’ to everything Mom chastised him for just to get it over with, so outlining what you’d done wrong had become a staple in the Nixus household.

“Fighting bullies makes me no better than them.”

“What?” Mom laughed. “No, you’re definitely better than them. Don’t tell Luke to try lying to me. He’s no good at it.”

Luke nodded at that.

“The principal was going to tell Jubi-ei,” James said, frowning. “I don’t think he’d take too kindly to his lessons being used like that.”

“You’d be surprised what Jubi thinks about things like that. Don’t you worry about that. And if Principal Nuran thinks there’s an issue with fighting back against bullies, have a dove sent for me. I’ll come right over and I’ll tell him what I think.” She said the last part with an ominous grin and flexed a bicep. Luke mimicked her.

James laughed weakly and set his backpack near the door beside Luke’s, then took off his shoes and ventured inside.

It turned out the reason Luke’d been so glum was that they were waiting for the oven in the kitchen to finish its work. His brother hated waiting. As the three of them sat down— Mom poking her head into the kitchen first— his little brother began excitedly telling him about how Mom let him dice the vegetables and stir a mixture of ingredients together that sounded to James like some sort of pastry. He felt more certain of that after Luke said that he wasn’t allowed back in the kitchen and would have to wait and see what he helped make. Dinner wouldn’t be served until Dad was home.

Mom brought out a set of cards and they played a few rounds to occupy themselves. During the game, Luke enlightened them on the latest prank he’d pulled with a classmate’s help— replacing the ink of a teacher’s jar with soy sauce. James shook his head disapprovingly. Mom just laughed and said the man had it coming. To be honest, James had the same teacher and remembered him to be unnecessarily mean for a teacher to six-year-olds, so he probably did have it coming.

Not half an hour later, the door was pushed open again, this time by their father. Raum Nixus was a tall, broad-shouldered man with dark eyes and darker hair. He occupied the entire doorframe as he heaved deep breaths, dripping sweat.

A chill swept through James. Something was wrong.

“Love?” Mom asked. “What’s happened?”

Dad wiped his brow and shut the door quickly, flipping the latch to lock it. He was silent for a moment, then turned and made eye contact with all three of them before answering her.

“Down at the docks, everyone’s saying the parley outside the city has gone and broken down. I went to the gates.” Raum swallowed hard. “I saw them, wearing Munitio’s Fifth. Vander Wolf’s men setting ladders, pouring over the walls like a busted dam.”

James looked to his mother, and felt a deep, primal fear run through him when he saw the horror painted on her face. What next struck him— quite profoundly— was the way she hid her expression as best she could and put on a brave front when she noticed him staring at her.

The following hours were of chaos and devastation. The illustrious metropolis of laurels and waterfalls became a terrible furnace churning heat and smoke, awash with the rancid stench of the departed. It was said all across Asundria that the young Prince Ganymede died a commoner’s death, cut down by an unknown assailant in the streets of his beloved, beautiful city as it burned and choked on its own ashes.

James and Raum were shipped off on a train bound for the Vegai mountains that very night.

———

“There’s a sixth color?”

Argent nodded. He stood opposite Luke in a clearing near the cabin, bandaged hands on his hips and a long black cloak flapping in the wind at his back. “That’s right. Cyan is the color of foundation.”

Luke stretched his legs. They felt good as new, though he knew it wasn’t the case. Smashing his feet into the earth stepping toward Levian in a fit of fury had taken a toll on them. That framework of Magenta clinging to him really was a thing of wonder. His own dark green cloak, of the same fine spiralsilk as Argent’s, fluttered behind him.

“Give it a try,” Argent said. “Weave it.”

Luke closed his eyes. The pines and the sky vanished, the wind and the morning cries of songbirds muted in his ears as he concentrated.

Cyan.

The color entered him from a place beyond sight, cool as if the wind were his veins yet paradoxically a comforting warmth. It was a strange but pleasant sensation. Like pinpricks it pierced his skin, venturing toward his chest to coalesce. From there, he began to pull it—

Argent whistled loudly. “No, no, no.” Luke’s eyes snapped open to see the man wave a hand in a cutting motion. “That’s unnecessary. You don’t need to fill your flask every time you draw on the well.”

“Fill my what?”

“Let me start over. Your body is a conduit for the colors. Flashy dust goes in, parlor tricks and incredible power go out. Can we agree that this is the basis of Weaving?”

Luke folded his arms and nodded.

“You’ve thought about the whats and the whys, no doubt, but what about where? Where do the colors come from?”

He furrowed his brow. He had no idea. Something had been bothering Luke for a while, an annoying chirp in the back of his mind. What exactly did Yellow allow him to see? Did the colors not exist unless they were called for? He shook his head.

“We don’t create them, do we?”

“Not at all,” Argent said, gesturing dismissively. “Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you wanted a color, but it refused to answer your call?”

“A few times.”

Argent nodded. “You don’t have to pull anything into your chest. That takes a second or two. You’re developing a very slow habit. Excess color you pluck from the air will gravitate to your chest on its own. What you’ve been doing is randomly choosing entry points for the color to enter your body, then collecting it all in the middle like a funnel. Instead, I want you to try pulling Yellow from the air with your eyes. Yellow plays nice, it should stick to your eyes like glue.”

Luke weaved, blinking Yellow in one quick try. The glow of the Magenta framework caught his eye, as well as thin, almost imperceptible trails of Green light swirling around Argent, particularly around the mouth to distort his voice. He understood the benefit immediately— faster color control offered a greater advantage in combat.

“Good, now try Cyan in your hand. Cyan likes it there.”

He took a deep breath, held out a hand with fingers splayed, and pulled. Instead of drawing in pinpricks all around him, it was as if he pressed his palm into the surface of a rippling pool. Cool, comforting Cyan met his touch. Something felt special about this color, something that couldn’t be put into words. He felt almost… connected…

Without thinking, he slid the handful of Cyan up his arm, across the shoulder and through the neck into his eyes. The moment the Yellow and Cyan came into contact, Luke’s vision was bombarded by a thousand gleaming lights. In that moment, he was no longer standing in a forest clearing, but somewhere completely different. The form and shape of things became distant. Everything, everything was made of six pure colors, a shimmering dust casting brilliant light on a black canvas that stretched into infinity.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

He could make out Argent by flecks of Green darting around a human-shaped void, as if he were part of the canvas. Glancing down, Magenta clung to his own invisible insides. Following its threads, he could see thick ropes of the color drifted toward the shape of Argent. When he compared it to the other five, there wasn’t as much nearby.

So small he nearly missed it, he spotted a flicker of Cyan where Argent’s hand would be. He frowned. Was the man controlling three colors? But, no. Somehow he knew that wasn’t it. He lifted his own right hand, an act that felt strange in this place where the seen and the unseen were reversed. There was a bold, bright fixture of Cyan in a curious circular pattern clinging to his palm. The tightly-packed cluster of color was flat and molded to the ups and downs of his skin, almost like a tattoo. The shape was somewhat reminiscent of a child’s drawing of the sun, a circle and various tiny swirls on the outer edge, but there were three distinct inward lines curved to match the indentations of his palm’s skin. The Cyan pattern pulsed softly at a fixed pace, as if to the beat of a soundless drum. He closed his hand and concentrated, feeling the sun-like tattoo beneath his fingertips pulse in tune with the beating of his own heart.

Reluctantly, he released the colors from his eyes and returned to the world he knew. One that felt utterly dim in comparison.

“I wasn’t expecting you to visit the other side on your own,” Argent said. “How do you feel?”

“Fine, thanks to you.”

“And?”

“It’s this,” Luke said, holding his palm out. “Isn’t it?”

Argent nodded slowly.

“What is it?”

“Have you ever heard a voice?” Argent asked, raising his head skyward. “Like yours, but different.”

“You’re kidding. I thought I was going crazy.”

“Oh, we are,” he said quietly. “The whole world’s gone crazy. You and me, kid, we just have a wing up on the rest of them.”

“It warned me,” Luke said. “Somebody was coming up behind me who meant me harm. It protected me.”

“It’ll do that. I can’t get mine to shut up.” He paused. “You would know if you were paying attention. I know— I know you’re running the calculations. You said it wasn’t—” Argent flipped a hand as if to say ‘see what I mean?’ and rolled his eyes.

“You can hold a conversation with that voice? Doesn’t it make you uneasy? I mean, it sounds just like you, doesn’t it?”

Argent shrugged. “You learn to pick up the differences.”

“Mine barely speaks to me.”

Are you there? What's your name?

No response.

“Maybe he doesn’t like you.”

“Why pick me, then?”

“Don’t sweat the details, Luke. You’ll have someone to talk with sooner or later. Befriending a voice in your head takes patience.”

Luke studied his palm and nodded slowly.

“Great. Now, where were we?”

“You were saying something about flasks and wells.” Luke pulled Cyan into his hand and felt it undulate. “I think I get it. It’s faster to move color from the other side directly into the body part I want to enhance. I didn’t realize how much control I have over how it enters.”

“Yeah. You’ve got a good grasp on the idea. Here, let me try the analogy on you again. The other side. Think of that as the well. Where the water comes from. There’s only so much in any given area; it can run dry as any other well. Now, the flask. Gourd, tankard. Whatever you wish to scoop up and hold that water with.” Argent stepped toward him. A soft, unnatural wind brushed his cloak as the man drew close and poked his chest. “That’s in here. You can only fit so much inside, but it will never leak out the way it will from your limbs and such.”

So close, those eyes, as if they were the piles of treasure long lost. The only part left unobstructed by bandages. What was he thinking? What did this mysterious man get out of such impromptu tutelage?

“Not going too fast, am I?”

It didn’t matter. Luke shook his head. Distant thoughts tugged at his consciousness. Painful feelings pricked at him through the shielding.

“Ready to practice a little pulling with the other colors?”

He nodded.

———

Typhos circled the air with a booted toe dangled over the edge of a bed he’d propped himself up on. His rags stank from his travels, though he dared not wash them by his own will. The rains would do their wet work just as well as his own, and a storm would be rolling in on the night of the operation according to the Shield’s experts.

He would butcher for his master and his master’s master. How many this time? Fourteen already in this pitiable little village, half by his own hand. Delphy of Castitas, a good man by any standard. Whose standard?

He sat up quickly, feeling dazed.

No one. Delphy was a criminal, one summarily judged and tried for the treasonous act of opposing the absolute will of the emperor. The man made his choice when he moved against Master Vega. To shed his blood was no moral hanging. It was just.

He looked around. The bedroom of Cyrus Alder had changed from how the boy left it. Gone were its neatness and tidiness, small pieces of furniture and stacks of clothes and books and miscellaneous objects made to occupy every surface or otherwise strewn about, mostly to clear space in the mayor’s office or empty the hallways for the soldiers.

On a particular wooden dresser amid such a mess sat a family portrait of the Alder family, a much smaller Alder and his mother and father beside him, all smiling broadly with jubilant eyes and expressions.

He took one step and swiped Hagetaka across the dresser in a fury, creating a racket of glass and ceramic shattered as objects collided with one another and crashed against whatever laid at the foot of the dresser.

He remembered nothing in the moment, only shouting something at the guard outside his door to cease their knocking and steady their nerves. He sheathed his blade and grabbed his quivering hand by the wrist with his other. It would be good to return to the bloody butcher work again. Anything to be away from this solitude; these thoughts.

“Why don’t you just stop thinking about it?”

His eyes darted left and right, scanning quickly for the source of the voice. Terribly close. His quivering hand grew still as stone, fingers fluid as water as they clasped around the hilt of Hagetaka. What direction had that come from? Inside the room without a doubt.

He felt surprise only after his cursory scan, a fraction of a second later. It was a child’s voice. At least, he thought it to be so. It was quite high-pitched. Could it be one of the terrorist Rhea’s assassins?

Take me for a child and you will find yourself sorely mistaken.

He realized it there and then. It was not a voice in the sense of one that was spoken aloud. The words were thoughts impressed upon the inside his head. And yet, his attention felt… drawn somehow, toward the dresser on which he’d lost his temper. To the left it sat, among the objects remaining that had not incurred his wrath. A curious little antique coingourd with a Phaethon cap and a vivid violet pattern unlike any he’d ever seen, color twisted as if to imitate a den of writhing snakes.

Hello there, Typhos, the voice said. Or is it James?

“What are you?” Typhos whispered. There was the slightest hint of distortion to the voice he hadn’t noticed before, as though there were not one but two high-pitched voices overlapping. He squinted and could make out the faintest difference of color around the gourd, as if something were permeating the room. Tinged violet, only darker.

Men, it began, use my name on occasion. I mean you no harm, Typhos. Not yet, at least. It is Typhos, isn’t it? I can read your thoughts. Hey. Are you listening? I wouldn’t do that if I were y—

Typhos cleaved an arc with Hagetaka, launching the gourd against the wall with a thump. Hardly the expected outcome as it plunked to the ground in one piece, not a scratch to be seen. He dropped to one knee and held the gourd down with one hand and slowly ran the blade’s edge against it. Some kind of… force… repelled him, as if he were cutting into a bubble of resistant air that perfectly matched the shape of the gourd.

The child-like voice sighed. Are you finished?

“What are you?” he demanded.

I am but a humble gourd looking for a new owner.

“Don’t play games with me,” he said through gritted teeth.

I don’t like your tone. How about showing a little more respect? You know, in my heyday, they called me the Bane of Asundria.

“Sure they did,” he said, squeezing the gourd tightly as if to pop it. His fingers met that same unnatural resistance, though he could feel the grain of the surface as if it were any other gourd. So bizarre. “And I’m the deadliest assassin in the Terra Daevan Empire.”

Second deadliest. By the way, if this is supposed to be your idea of an assassination, I worry for the longevity of this empire of yours. The thing sighed a long, drawn-out sigh. Oh, woe is me! So much for having someone to chat with.

Two curt knocks and a pause followed by two more knocks marked a messenger outside. Typhos rose, leaving the gourd on the floor where it had fallen. He made his way to the door— avoiding the shards of glass of ceramic— and pulled it open.

A newer Cathartes agent looked down on him. The man glanced away, a clear nervous tic. The mentors would stomp vulnerabilities like those out of him within the month. Despite an advantage in muscle mass and nearly a foot of height, Typhos still unsettled this man.

“Griseus.”

“My Ace,” he said and bowed his head. “Master Vega demands your presence. He has a mission for you, one that may return you to the master’s good graces.”

“Does he now?” Typhos asked, venom in his voice.

Griseus showed his palms. “My apologies. I’m only delivering the master’s message.”

Hagetaka whistled through the leather sheath and its glimmering steel edge kissed the man’s neck. The messenger went stiff as stone.

“Do not shirk your duty, courier Griseus,” he said. “Your master’s word is law. Do not presume a sarcastic comment gives you leave to act otherwise. Deliver the orders and nothing more.”

“I understand, Ace Typhos.” The man’s face was smooth, but one of his thumbs was twitching madly. So the mentors were working on this one. At least he hadn’t pissed himself. He sheathed the tachi and nodded to Griseus, then shut the door.

Good graces. Not likely. Vega will never trust me again. He eyed the gourd. Can it actually read my mind, or has it just been picking up chatter from the others? How would it know the name I abandoned?

Have you ever known a gourd to lie? You’ve been dwelling on your past an awful lot in here. Pardon my eavesdropping, but you’re quite loud. I couldn’t help but hear that old name rippling on the surface of your thoughts.

The surface?

I know you are exceptionally quick-witted and will not bother to conceal this, fun as it would be. Admittedly, I cannot hear everything you’re thinking. Only what your soul cries out the loudest. In other words, you wanted to be heard. You just didn’t think anyone was listening.

It was… right. He did want someone to listen. That’s why he couldn’t stop thinking about his past; his choices. He hated it, but that was the way of it. He couldn’t feel emotions, but that didn’t mean they were gone. Solitude was leading him to madness. Of all the people in the world to understand him, it had to be the talking gourd. Fantastic.

Did you get all that?

More or less. I lied, by the way. I’m not actually a gourd.

What of you, then? Do you have a name?

The disembodied voice clucked its tongue. However that worked.

I do, it said. Men named me, as they tend to do with all things they wish to shackle and control. Like you, I left it behind to gather dust unspoken. I gave myself a new name, one free of the influence of such men. One to break their constraints and mark my liberty. I have listened to your heart and find in you a kindred spirit. I am the Raven, and if you let me out of this Flock-damned gourd, I will share with you the gift of the peerless power called freedom.

Typhos knelt down, grasping the coingourd by its carrying cord and tucked it inside an ankle pouch, replacing one of his knives. First, he would meet with his master. Then he would decide.

Freedom. The word beat through his head like a drum.