“You want me to send an Iron into the crack?!” Faust asked, flabbergasted.

Jabari nodded. “I do.”

“But the boy will die.”

“He’ll be fine. He’s stronger than you have been led to believe.”

“Led by whom?”

Jabari looked down at him. “Circumstances.”

Faust took his time to mull it over. The man was asking that he sacrifice a group of his seminarians. They had potential from the little he knew, but they remained expendable. Seth belonged to the man so his sacrifice would hurt no more than Faust’s conscience. However, the cost of the rest of the team would affect the seminary.

He got up from the floor as quickly as he could, struggling through the action. When he was on his feet, he stood beside Jabari and asked, “And what do we get in return?”

Jabari looked him in his shriveled up face and replied, “I will give you options. Two, to be precise. And you will choose one.”

“And what are they?”

Jabari turned so that he faced him completely. “I can either help the seminary,” he said. “Or I can help you.”

“How?”

Jabari froze for the briefest moment. In it a single eye seemed to grow distant, yet its silver presence deepened. While the other continued its eerie vibration, it stilled as eyes were supposed to. However, something about its normalcy was unnatural on the man. Yet, the other eye watched Faust as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

When it was done, the moment passed, Jabari answered, “I can either show you how to survive the state you find yourself in. For one with your path of evolution, it would not be too difficult, or I could push Jedidiah to the next authority.”

“There is another authority beyond Herald?” Faust sputtered.

“The latter will be a boon to the seminary. The former will be a boon to you. Choose wisely.”

“And all I have to do is send the boy and his team into the world crack?”

“Yes.”

“What of his safety? What of his position?”

Jabari dismissed his worry with a casual wave. “What you choose to make of him inside the world crack is your business. All I require is that he and his team are inside it at the earliest possibility.”

Faust’s mind ran gleefully through possibilities. Sending Seth into the crack was no longer a question of if but a matter of when. However, the boy’s safety had to be ensured. He would send him and his team in under the guidance of a Baron. But the Baron had to be trustworthy. Perhaps he would send John. He would object but would concede without question, eventually.

Today he’d gained such great options. Who knew what he would gain tomorrow.

As if reading his mind, Jabaria added: “Know that this will be the last request I make of the seminary regarding the boy. You and yours will receive no further help from me, and the boy will be yours to do with as you please. After this, your interests and mine will cease to coincide.”

Faust’s mouth dropped. With the state of his body he feared his jaw might’ve unhinged. He reached a tentative hand to it and was glad to find that was not the case.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“I have made my request,” Jabari said. “You will adhere to it.”

Faust nodded. “I will.”

“I have also given my payment. And now you must pick one.”

“Just out of curiosity,” Faust began. “How exactly do you intend to fix me, if I choose myself? The seminary boasts one of the greatest healers of our time and nothing he found was able to. Is it potions or elixirs? Do you know a healer?”

“I do not.”

“Then how?”

Jabari focused both vibrating eyes on him and his answer bore a hole in Faust’s soul.

“I will make you a Herald.”

……………………………………………………

The cell they had confined him to was boring. There was neither a window nor a bed. There was no toilet to use and no means to entertain himself. All there was existed in a small glow of blue light hanging from one side of the walls. When Igor had abandoned him here, he had claimed he would be here for a few days, starved, fed very little.

For Forlorn, it was a small price to pay in exchange for one of Seth’s arms.

In the beginning his dislike for his brother had been simple. Before Seth had arrived he had been the smallest of them all. Goaded and made fun of for his height, he had devoted himself to accepting it quietly. Then Seth had come and taken the place of the smallest. However, none teased him for it. And when he tried, they silenced him, picked on him even further. They treated him like the easy target, just as his brothers back home had done. Mocking him for the color of his hair and his height, and the fact that he didn’t live in the main house.

They mocked him for not knowing the face of his father.

As if that was not enough, Seth had taken to defying him too. Then he’d learned of the special circumstances surrounding Seth’s arrival at the seminary on the faithful day of the test where they were required to hunt down reia beasts to get their fragments, and it had irked him more. It was no wonder the boy carried himself around like he was something special. That and the fact that Timilehin panted at his every word.

Then they’d all grown, evolved into the authority of Iron, and Seth only seemed to get shorter as everyone else grew. And still, none mocked him for his height. Yet they attacked how Forlorn behaved, attacked every single thing he did. They shunned him and mocked him and looked down on the very nature of who he was. All except Barnabas.

Now that they’d returned from their pastoral year, it was hilarious to find the high and mighty Seth Al Jabari was still an Iron. For all his bravado he had failed to evolve. It was laughable. Yet no one had laughed. He was short and weak, yet they allowed him a place at the table. Allowed the weak a place to speak amongst his betters. It was not right. Then, as if the insult to his person was not enough, Barnabas began to shun him too.

The boy thought he did not notice but he did. It was in the snide remarks. The side glances. The tightened jaw. Barnabas was beginning to look down on him too. And it had all begun after that horrible night. The night he’d left the comfort of their bed to spend the night with Seth under the starlight.

Seth had taken everything from him despite not deserving any of it. It was unfair. And it was his duty to create fairness in the unfair.

His mind was drawn from its annoyance at a sound beyond his cell. It was odd. Igor had claimed no one would come to him or talk to him till morning. He’d tried talking to the seminarians that stood guard outside his door and they’d proven Igor right. There were eight of them by his count. Two at each intersection that led to his cell and two standing guard at his cell. All of them gold.

He heard the sound again and walked up to his door. It was made of the same weird black stone the cell was were fashioned from and was weirder to touch, so he made sure not to touch it.

The sounds beyond the cell became clearer. There was a grunt and a scuffle. He heard the sound of fighting and the activation of skills that lit up the dark corridors. He heard the sound of bodies clashing. One echoed through the wall as it was slammed into it. Whoever had suffered the attack did not break through the wall. Forlorn’s pastoral year had done well in teaching him what it sounded like, and this wasn’t it.

The sounds grew closer and a fear seized him by the spine. He staggered back until he was as close to the wall as he could be without touching it as one of his guards rushed forward to give aid. Whatever it was, it was dispatching of gold authority seminarians without making so much as a grunt. If it did, he hadn’t heard it.

He heard another body fly into a wall and paled. When his second guard charged forward in an echoing of footsteps, he was all alone.

Then there was silence.

It did not live long.

A groan echoed from the door and he knew someone was outside. There was a twist and a turn as whoever it was worked the cell door, then there was a click.

The cell door opened slowly and each movement was a herald of fear. Finally, it was wide open.

Whoever it was remained concealed in the darkness. When the person spoke, however, fear released Forlorn’s spine only so it could take his heart.

“Rumor has it,” the person said, “that I would find you here.”