Seth absently adjusted the straps of the sword he had still not yet seen.

“Is it that heavy?”

Seth nodded.

Jim chuckled. “That’s because you’re wearing it wrong. Weapons like that have an under draw.”

“Under draw,” Seth asked, confused.

Jim rose from his chair and stepped around the table. He approached Seth with the comfortable ease of a man in his domain and stopped in front of him.

“Short swords like the one you’re carrying,” he said, reaching for the straps and removing them, “are only as heavy as your strain implies when they require an under draw.”

The sword came free of Seth and he restrained a sigh of relief at the loss of the weight. When Jim held them out to his side, a look he could not quite place crossed the man’s expression. It was gone as quickly as it had come.

Jim took both weapons to his black desk and Seth followed behind him.

“A piece interwoven with the wood of a slain mother broach,” he said, and it took Seth only a moment to realize he spoke of the black table.

“It’s the most expensive thing in this office,” Jim continue, slowly unraveling the wraps of the sword. “Not particularly my taste, though. But one of my beneficiaries got it for me, so… I kept it. I can’t always turn down their gifts now, can I?”

“Beneficiaries?” Seth asked and Jim paused at the final layer to look at him.

“You don’t…” he slapped his forehead. “I almost forgot how much the seminary likes to let seminarians figure shit out. I am what you call a benefactor. In fact, most occupants in the houses are. What I do is I make money by sponsoring independent adventurers and hunters, people who do not want to join official guilds, on their escapades. They come to me to apply for sponsorship and, if I think they are worth it, I aid them financially and add them into temporary teams.”

“And how do you make the money you spend back?”

“Simple,” he unwrapped the last layer of fabric and frowned at the result, then turned a questioning look at Seth. “What are these?”

Seth’s shock was strong enough to stun even his minds to silence. He stared at the weapons on the table and paled. It was impossible. He refused to believe Jabari had this much influence. He was powerful, but to be this powerful meant he was more than just any simple reverend.

Still, looking down at the weapons scared him. Their scabbards were a dark black of burnt wood, though he doubted the wood used to fashion them had been actually burnt. As if impatient, Jim picked one up and drew its blade free. The blade came free with a deadly hiss expected of any sword. He put both sword and scabbard down and repeated the action with the second.

The twin blades where a close replica to Dainik and Varmin. The only difference was in their color and styling. He recognized the color immediately. Both blades were a deep black that did not carry a silver hue at their blades as most sharpened ones do.

But he doubted that was what held Jim’s attention. What stood out most about them were the cracks that ran the length of the blades, growing from their hilts like roots of a tree. They were wide enough to be called grooves rather than cracks, and a dull tinge of orange red hid beneath each crack.

He watched the dual blades with equal parts of fear and awe. He wondered what they would be capable of. If they had been gifted qualities as Dainik and Varmin possessed.

Jim turned to him. “I’m confused,” he said. He rose to his full height and walked around the table to have reclaim his seat. “This confuses me.”

It confused Seth as well. Regardless, he said, “I don’t understand.”

Jim adjusted on his chair, like a king contemplating judgement on a lesser. “Your test scores were nothing spectacular. According to Igor, except for your convergent skill—which I will request to see, eventually—you have not place with the sword. Oscar gave a few compliments on your use of the knife but said you fight as if they’re too short for you.” He reached for a drawer in his desk and took out a square box no larger than his hand and placed it on the table. “Clint said you’re an average tracker but good at the signs. Nehemiah doesn’t care enough for you, and Domitia praises your ability for unarmed combat.”

He opened the square box, its polished brown insinuating it was made of wood, and pulled out a soul fragment. It was black.

“But that’s not the point,” he continued. “My point is, only Emriss had something commendable to say of you in her report. Apparently, you have the best special awareness in your group. According to her,” he placed his elbows on the table and leaned forward, “you are so good you can shoot a fly if you put your mind to it. So I thought the seminary was bringing me a sniper. But here you are,” he waved the hand holding the fragment at him, “carrying more swords than anyone has a right to.”

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Seth smiled sheepishly, unsure of how to respond. “I did not request for the swords.”

Jim gave him a skeptical look.

“Not those ones,” he corrected.

“And yet, the seminary deemed it fit to gift them to you.” Jim placed the fragment on the table, let it lay recklessly. “Then there’s the rumors about you amongst the priests. Do you know that you’re the only known seminarian in the seminary’s history to not have received a fragment from the seminary? Rumor has it no one knows where you got your fragment from, how you got it, how many you have, or what type you have. As far as the seminary is concerned. You are a souled without a soul.”

That came as a surprise to Seth. Surely Faust had to know already. If he was souled at some point, it would have been at Jabari’s hand. He couldn’t put it past the man. And, as a reverend, Jabari answered to Faust. So why?

“Do you know you are popular amongst the priests?” Jim asked.

Seth nodded. “I’ve had soul mage eyes since the day I entered the seminary. They used to be very grey.”

Jim laughed. It was croaked and deep. “Not that, Seth. Your eyes were a nice topic but that made you popular amongst the older seminarians. The priests only spoke of it for a short while. But your souled status with no knowledge of how, why or where was what really grabbed all their attentions. It was so grand that that’s when I first heard of you. The soulless mage. That’s what the priests call you.”

“Because no one knows what soul I have or how I got it.”

“Bingo. But I intend to change that. I can’t have you feeling so special now, can I?” he shot a pointed look between Seth and the fragment on the table. “How would you like a black fragment, Seth?”

A tempting offer. Seth had been fighting himself from looking at the fragment with much success. His heart had hoped the man would offer it, yet his minds had known he would not. No matter how many adventurers he sponsored, no one was so rich they could merely hand out a black fragment. Even Barons were known to treat the things like gold.

“What do you say, Seth?” Jim asked. “It’s a fragment one of my beneficiaries pulled of a Baron level soul beast a few days ago. Apparently, he stumbled across it on one of his expeditions. Unfortunately for him, his soul is full, and he has trust issues. So he gave me to hold for him.”

“And you’ll hand it over to me,” Seth asked, skeptical. “Just like that.”

“Not just like that,” Jim laughed. “It comes at a price. The price of the soulless mage.”

“You want to take away a title from me? A title I never even knew I had before today.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Simply because. You see Seth,” he leveled his swamp green eyes on him. “You can tell much about a man by what he is willing to exchange, no matter how valueless one of the things being exchanged might seem. For instance,” he gestured at him, “a title unknown until this very moment for,” then gestured at the fragment, “a black fragment taken from a ground drake.”

A drake? One of his minds thought, excited. Aren’t they the rarest soul beasts? When they show up its usually as part of fissures alone. And they aren’t even that many.

Be quiet, another mind shunned it. he isn’t going to pick a title over it. He’s simply wondering if he’ll be able to absorb it. He’s also trying to figure out Jim’s angle.

Is that true?

“Does it matter?” he asked it, quietly.

“Apparently so,” Jim said. “Black fragments don’t just give powerful skills, sometimes it gives skills closely related to the soul beasts they’re taken from.”

We think it best if he doesn’t think you’re cracked in the head. He might respect us better that way.

Seth didn’t really care how the man saw him at this point. His mind was more fixed on what games the man was playing. “He’ll find out eventually. There’s no point hiding it in the beginning. We can’t hide it for a year.”

Jim’s head tilted slightly. “Who?”

“No one,” Seth answered, then reached for the table.

His hand moved past the twin swords, their presence filling the air, and wrapped his hand around the black fragment. The priest was foolish if he thought Seth would hesitate to claim the fragment, or at least try to.

“You remember how to do it?”

Seth nodded absently. He had a memory sharp enough to cut the sea. He still remembered Faust’s guidance even when he hadn’t been paying attention.

With the fragment in his hand, he took a slow, deep breath, then focused. The world morphed itself around him. It’s clear presence around him blurred. Colors, while noticeable, deemed. It was like standing in a bright room only to have the lights around him dim.

Then the sensations eased away from him. As had been the case once before, touch left him. Then sound followed. Smell was next, and sight last. But they did not flee him completely. They remained, hovering like the dying rather than the dead, so that they were merely dulled.

He felt only the fragment clearly, naught else. It was a mystery to him. Today, there was no heat, no warmth like what had come with Faust’s assistance. It was there, as present as anything had any right to be. However, its presence was defiant, as if it stood against him and everything he stood for, though he could not imagine anything he stood for.

He did not like it. It reminded him of his inability to absorb it.

Last time, he had accepted his fate. He had accepted he was not strong enough to absorb a fragment of any kind. What had he been thinking then; what had gotten into him? What soul mage accepted they were unable to do something? The point of being a soul mage was to reach for the impossible.

What was worse was that last time he had simply been unable to absorb it. But now, it seemed a cruel joke. As if it mocked him. Defied him. It stood against him like the proud. It knew he couldn’t absorb it and mocked him for it.

That’s a dark path to walk down, one of his minds thought, gently, as if approaching a skittish horse.

The fragment has nothing against you, another thought with the same gentility. It is not alive.

“Then why do I feel its defiance,” he growled. “Why does it challenge me?”

Is he always like this? the mind he knew to be the youngest asked. He seems paranoid.

“Silence!” he hissed. “I need focus.”

There was a hesitance to the silence that followed but it came nonetheless. When it did, he doubled his efforts on the fragment and forced his mind. His fist tightened around the fragment and he willed it to crush, tightened his grip until he felt his muscles push against his skin.

The fragment did not budge, did not bend to his will.

It offended him even more, and without hesitation, he cycled his core. Reia flooded him like an ocean drowning a city, strengthen him. It gave levity to his strength and his fist squeezed tighter.

Still, the fragment did not budge.

When his will and determination began giving out something pierced his dying senses. It emanated from within his fist and pierced a single sense like the crash of a single thunder strike in a distance so far away it could’ve been imagined.

In his silence, something cracked.