The clang and bong of sparring filled up the little patio. The sky was dumping rain like a nervous firefighter who couldn’t hold the bucket right. Even in the pouring rain, Grandmaster Thayne fully insisted on sparring until Ike’s body was sufficiently covered in bruises and little cuts from the tip of his blade.
“Lift! Lift up your arm boy, how do you ever intend to properly parry a blade like that?” Just one of the man’s many non-clever bits of advice. Ike didn’t intend to parry anything. He was carrying a shovel.
“Ready!” Thayne shouted out, and the sword came crashing down again.
Ike’s mind was dull and blank when the metal started moving. The most he could bother to dredge up in rational thoughts was a spiteful renunciation of the critique, eventually repeating in his head a dozen times until he found his groove with it. In the brief pauses between fighting just to keep from being cleaved in half, usually when Ike ended up on the ground, his mind jumped to the restless anger that had been growing inside him since he agreed to stay in the cursed monastery.
He readied his feet after another failure. Held out the shovel in front of him like a spear, but not exactly. Fighting with a shovel was stupid. Ike knew that, but he couldn’t bring himself to pick up anything else. The blade came swinging viciously, and the shovel would slide it to the left on its best moves and get knocked to the ground on its worst. Once he got a hit in with the butt of the shovel, once.
Ike was just in the middle of walking off a thumping bruise on his back when the monk came. He stood at the path just before the archway. Ike nodded at him, and Thayne turned, then grunted and turned back.
“You’ve an hour to rest. I’d suggest doing the motions I showed you to practice your flow, though.”
“What is it?” Ike asked, head empty as a glass of air.
The big man snarled, or something like it. He tossed the shiny silver sword into a bush, which caught the blade with surprising buoyancy, then started stalking off to the monk.
“Correspondence for you, sir!” The black-clad boy barked out. Thayne grabbed him on the back of the neck and practically dragged him away from the patio.
Just one more secret on the list of many. When he sat down on the patch of fresh grass lining the soft brown patio stones, he had all those secrets pushed up to the front of his tired mind. He always knew he knew nothing, but now he knew even less. Go figure.
Thayne was preparing him for a journey, to fight, but fight who? And why? None of the monks would open their mouths in listening distance. Even that old man Garnet never showed up to give him a chance to poke around for more information again.
Ike drew in a deep breath through his nose, then dumped it out through his mouth. He tried three more times to get himself settled but he just wouldn’t.
Thayne was gone. Answers were somewhere. The math seemed so infallibly simple that even an idiot like Ike could figure out that this was the best shot he had at figuring out literally anything. So he got up and left, strolling out into the courtyard with just the shovel on his back. He fancied himself a lone wanderer strolling through the garden of an evil witch, hunting down the fruit of information.
At least the garden was quiet. The only noise was the occasional passing murmur of discussion, the whisper of wind through brush, and then the very sudden caw from a bird up above. Scanning the trees for the culprit revealed nothing. Ike pursed his lips and pressed on, taunted by the dangling of something new buried in this emerald labyrinth.
That caw sounded off a few more times before Ike found the source. The Raveness’s tower. The bottom sort of ebbed out into the ground, then quickly thinned out as its smooth stone walls shot up into the sky. Ike could just make out the iron catwalk at the top and squinted to see a figure standing on it.
Someone was home.
The decision was likely a stupid one. Barging into the home of the prophetess sounded about as smart as trying to feed a demon, but he was running out of options. Time was still ticking away on Thayne’s little break. Nerinai, no matter what title she carried on her back, had saved his life and treated him with an odd sort of kindness. Maybe someone else would have missed it. Ike wanted to believe that she hadn’t saved him for nothing though, and that she cared enough about him to answer just a few questions.
After all, he was supposed to be her guardian. Filled up with faux confidence and assuring himself this was the right move, he walked up to the door and pushed it right in.
Nobody locked the door. Made sense, who was walking in on the prime lady of the Carrion Cross? Certainly that habitual oversight ignored the brave ignorance of one very lost muckraker.
The inside was dark. The only light came in through the doorway behind him, and all that lit up was the cobble stone floor and the foot of a staircase. A noise drew Ike’s head up the ceiling. Flapping wings in the darkness, blended with the sharp sounds of disturbed birds. Their little shadows danced in the upper walls of the tower and spread out to places Ike couldn’t see, probably to watch what he did next.
He started up the steps, fully expecting a lump of bird shit to clock him in the head any minute now. There were a lot of birds in here, more every step he climbed. Once he got up to about halfway he could see all the ledges cut into the walls were filled with beady little eyes and twitching bodies.
It did smell like a bird though. How could he describe the smell of birds? Birdy?
Trying to pick apart the origins and adequate synonyms for the smell nipped at the back of his mind as he climbed the endless spiral to the top, just keeping his mind off the darkness swallowing him whole. The threat of what came next scared him most of all. He wasn’t worried Nerinai would hurt him, but she’d probably tell him to take his sorry ass back out into the courtyard. He’d end up embarrassed on top of confusion.
Taking a breath deep enough to drown out his worries, Ike stepped forward on the landing and knocked on the door. The result was a pitifully timid tap that could have been ignored as a bird pecking the landing. Ike paced around for a minute, bouncing on his feet in the little space afforded before he tried again.
He knocked again. For a moment he considered walking back down to the courtyard and just waiting for Thayne to come and knock to nervous energy out of his bones, but without thinking he lifted his hand to knock again and-
The door swung open. Blinding white light filtered through around the dark shape standing in the hole. Nerinais' face was the picture of fury, with one hand on the frame and the other on the door.
"What?" She snapped out.
Ike floundered for words, mouth opening and shutting twice before he could make any words come out of it. "I, er, the front door was open," he said.
"So you just let yourself in?" Her snarl cooled off to a look of casual distaste.
"I was just- exploring. Yeah. Sorry, I saw the tower and- didn't want to intrude- just-"
She relaxed her position and held up a hand for him to stop. "No worries, guardian. At the very least you knocked."
A dumb grin appeared on his mouth. He was doing better than he thought he would. Most of the thoughts he had leading up to now involved a slammed door and damaged ego.
Once his eyes adjusted, Ike realized Nerinai wasn't wearing her cloak. Just the dark shirt pulled tight and tucked into her pants.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Other than the cloak, she looked just about the same as when Ike first saw her in the infirmary. An earring with a multicolored feather, some bone pins above it. Her dark hair falling down in thick and messy clumps around her neck. Taking her in like that left his face flushed. He’d only seen her one other time, but he felt like he was stepping in on somebody vulnerable, and familiar.
She cocked her head to the side, one curl of dark hair outlining her night-colored black as night eyes. “Was there anything else?”
Ike blinked, and all at once snapped back to why he came up here in the first place. He could already hear Thayne’s words repeated in her voice, ‘just wait and see!’. No. Ike needed some answers.
The space between her and the door frame seemed as close to an opening as he was gonna manage, so with all the mindless curiosity he could muster, Ike slipped right past her and into the room. She squinted daggers at him, but Ike was already inside and moving around the mess with his head in the clouds. The door slammed shut, leaving the two of them closed in together.
To say Nerinai liked birds would be an understatement. Ravens perched all along the outside walkway- seen through the perfectly clear glass walls- and fluttered in and out of the building with ease. A dozen or so birdhouses carved in simple shapes hung down from the ceiling. Even despite the plethora of birds, there wasn’t a spot of shit or shed feathers anywhere.
The birds were one thing though, living like them was another. What little furniture was in the room was pushed against the walls, like a long wooden desk loaded with books. One side was nestled into the corner, and the other was covered with a blanket hanging down and blocking out the sun's light. The rest of the room was spare concrete floor polished smooth, piles of clothing and scrapped paper, and a pile of bedding materials that could have been dirty laundry or her bed.
“So…” he let the vowel linger in the air as he searched for anything to talk about. “Birds?”
“Carrion.”
“Ah. Wait. Don’t they eat dead things?”
“Your point?” She folded her arms and stared at him. Eventually she shrugged. “They’re the only birds that can cross the blight and live. Plus, they tend to be smarter than most people.” As if on cue, one of the birds landed on her shoulder and cawed as she scratched its neck.
Ike nodded and just kept moving around, trying to come up with a good way to broach the subject. Why won’t anyone tell me what the plan is? Is Thayne beating me up for fun? Have you been avoiding me? All wonderful questions that just couldn’t meet his mouth.
He drifted over to the desk and the papers on its surface caught his eye. Each of them was filled with cramped handwriting, question marks, and strange diagrams. One of them was a floorplan with arrows to notes too small for Ike to read.
A hand appeared and smacked down on the desk. Ike jumped, then backed himself into the corner as Nerinai filled up his vision.
“Private,” she said simply.
She closed the distance to block him from seeing the desk, and consequently he was close enough to smell the jasmine incense hanging off her neck. Close enough to stare into her eyes and see that they weren’t totally black pools, but crossed with flecks of purple. Weak spots of color buried in her darkness. Once the pressure of eye contact became too much his eyes darted away, but didn’t go far, lingering on the sharp cut of her jaw.
“Guardian. Why are you here? Aren’t you supposed to be training with Thayne and the others? I wasn’t exactly expecting you to come snooping around, and even if I were, you still wouldn’t be entirely welcome.”
Ike swallowed. “Thayne went somewhere. Gave me a break.”
“And?”
“I… have questions.” His voice started shaking, but he decided to keep going anyway. “Thayne told me there was a reason he picked me, but I still have no idea what for or why. He keeps telling me to just work, and work, but I’m confused! How am I supposed to be a guardian when I don’t even know what I’m guarding, or worse, what from?”
This was the most he’d said in weeks. “Look, I know you obviously didn’t really want me to take this but I want to help. Seriously. You saved my life and I need to pay that back. Don’t tell me I don’t, please, because I want to pay it back. Literally anything would be better than getting sent back to the border so I can watch another group of people fall back to the mud. Anything.”
Just give me a reason to fight, he wanted to say, but he ran out of breath. He was panting as carefully as he could control. Nerinai’s expression softened just a tad, but she didn’t back off.
“How many have you watched die?”
Ike raised an eyebrow. “Huh?”
“Answer.” Her voice hadn’t lost its edge.
“I don’t know. A lot. Came close to dying myself more times than I can count.”
Before he could finish, Nerinai pushed herself off the desk and walked back a few steps. She turned to the window, and Ike followed her out to the balcony.
“I didn’t know.”
Ike wanted to ask what she didn’t know, because there was a fat chance she didn’t know that muckrakers were expendable. At least once a week someone tripped into the fog or took a lens's twisted limb to the gut and puked up the rest of his interior.
Thankfully, she followed up with, “Not that it was dangerous. That you would be there, so long.”
It took Ike a solid minute to see what she was doing. Pulling him away from the topic at hand. The constant misdirection just made him more desperate for an answer.
“What about this mission we’re supposed to leave for at the end of the week?”
She looked up at him.
“Will you leave if I tell you?” she asked through a sigh.
He nodded, dopey green eyes wide.
“Fine. The first thing you should know is that if you come with me, you’re going to die.”
Ike blinked. She looked over to him expectantly, but he said nothing, waiting for more. Did she really think that was going to scare him off? Ike, the muckraker who’d been given that same proposition every morning since as long as he could remember?
Nerinai huffed out, but kept going. “The line of the Raveness, the Carrion Cross, tells me how much you know about us. I assume you don’t have any faith in the doctrines. Frankly, neither do I. But please- tell me what you think I’m here for.”
“To wear a lot of black, I guess.” Ike leaned against the rail with her and caught the slightest curve of a grin on her face.
“No. No, the truth is much less easy then propagating an aesthetic, though that’s the better side of it. I was created for a sole purpose. As all of my predecessors. The timing of the arrangement is often random, but the monks will be told through a herald of the blight that the Black Palace is cracking. The gate to hell, the one that started this,” she said, waving out to the sea of brown out beyond the shamanic border,. “Is constantly at risk of shattering and making the blight worse. “
“So you close it?”
“In a way. Let me finish.” Nerinai had a way of making every other sentence sound like an insult. Or a threat. “Shamans. Do you know how we’re made?”
“Made?”
“Thought not. Fusion with the spirit of a demon. Ancient method that the old witches came up with to supersede the deals they took for power. They figured they could just tame the beast and use it’s power for themselves.” She looked down at her hand then showed it to Ike. “It worked. In a way. Today thousands of shamans populate the earth, the last guardians from the blight and its poison. I am unlike them. When I was born, someone figured I was strong enough and sold me to the monastery. Then a dozen of the brightest shamans died, fusing me with the spirit of an Archon spirit, as those before me were.”
Ike hummed in acknowledgement. He was about as historically inclined as a mouse with abnormally large ears, but he liked hearing her talk.
“So now I’m expected to close the gate. Nineteen years I had to prepare myself, and even then, I’m pushing the limit. Blame the priests, they wouldn’t stop looking for a guardian.”
“Why?”
Nerinai’s knuckles were white on the rail. “Because,” she forced out, “the purpose of a guardian is to be a sacrifice for the Raveness. Blood for the seals to the gate, just meat to be sacrificed so that I could get to where I need to be and accomplish my mission. I was just weeks away from doing it myself. The way I always planned on doing it.”
She turned to Ike. “Still think you want to help me? I offered you the opportunity to leave before, and I’ll offer it again. Take your things-”
“Nope.”
“No?”
“Nah.” Ike shrugged, looking out over the monastery, the town, the fields that kept them all alive. Amazing how much they’d learned to grow with so little space. “I want to help. Even if it means me dying… well. You said you had a plan for that right?” >This is important, isn’t it? Trying to save everyone else?”
She nodded. Something seemed to shift in the way she moved. Her arms were drawn in, head hung so the dark curls of her hair hid her face.
Ike got his answers, but a knot in his stomach came with it worrying that he’d upset her.
He lingered by the railing for a moment too long. “Take your leave, guardian. I must think about this.” SHE SAID
Ike didn’t argue when he stepped away. He made his way to the door quietly. Thayne would probably be waiting for him, and if he said anything the sparring would probably be worse. So much for waiting and seeing, right?
Just before he went, Nerinai’s voice caught him in the door.
“Wait,” she said. “Are you really willing to help me? No matter what? I need loyalty more than anything, do you understand?”
“Yeah,” he answered. It felt right to say.
She turned to him. The pained look on her face struck something critical in Ike’s head. Something he couldn’t touch or open up like a locked box, that suddenly frustrated him.
“Thank you, then. See you in a few days.”