“Focus!” barked Arnold, thwacking Nathan on the forearm with a wooden kitchen spoon. “An orb, a bubble, David’s idiotic magnet metaphor!”

Nathan winced as the spoon collided with his forearm once again. It was beginning to get red.

“Cleo got a Veil down in under fifteen minutes, Nathan. And here you are, floundering like a fish in the sky, tryna swim but there ain’t no water around ya. Fallin’ ain’t swimmin’ son.”

Nathan gritted his teeth, enduring several more wooden spoons to the arms, back, and thighs. It wasn’t torture. He’d quite literally been tortured before and this was a far cry from a shadow of that. But Cleo had gotten it down much faster than he, and that was torture enough.

The woman sat, watching, in a chair off to the side, shit-eating grin plastered from ear to ear. It was the most genuine joy he had ever seen on the nasty woman’s face. No matter what happened now, he’d never hear the end of this.

Nathan held his stance, legs wide, back pencil straight, arms held in front of him holding the smooth glass ball. The ball had seemed light at first, but now his muscles were burning with effort. It had only been an hour or so of holding this position. His skin was damp with sweat to the point that when Arnold yelled at him the breeze of his breath felt nice and cooling.

“Gah,” Nathan grunted as the wooden spoon cracked against the side of his head. The ball slipped from his sweat slick hands, but he quickly recovered and caught the thing before it shattered on the ground.

“Pathetic!” the old man yelled. Cleo didn’t bother to stifle a laugh as the spoon rapped him on the knuckles. Nathan would rather listen to the sound a dog makes right before it throws up than the woman’s hideous laugh. “Come on now, make the Veil. Imagine the glass orb enveloping you like the legs of a beautiful woman.”

Nathan did just that, then decided to imagine just normal enveloping. But try as he might, he couldn’t get it down. Either Nathan was an awful student, or Arnold was an awful teacher. The spoon came down on the crown of his head.

It’s him. He’s an awful teacher.

“Sink into the orb, into the Veil! Cut yourself out of the fabric of the Threads. Disappear.”

“I’m trying.”

“Try harder!”

Nathan clenched his eyes shut, ignoring Arnold’s hits – the man had never explained the reason for the wooden spoon. There probably wasn’t one besides the sadist's delight. He stilled his breathing and shut out everything else. The feel of the spoon hitting his exposed, tender skin, the sunlight streaming in through the tavern’s many windows, the sound of Cleo’s mockery, the scent of lunch cooking in the kitchen. All of it.

Veil. Magic. Slipping inside of it. Easy…

Right?

Nathan’s brow creased in concentration, a bead of sweat slipping off his nose. He pictured the sensation, the feeling, even using Arnold’s legs analogy. None of it worked. Setting his jaw, he dug deeper, further, trying to hide himself within himself.

A lot easier said than done.

A small part of him wondered if this was all some joke that Cleo had gotten Arnold to play on him in order to ‘prove’ that she was better. He wouldn’t have put it past her. It sounded like something he certainly may have done. But no, the woman’s sense of humor entailed far more cruelty and pain – not that the wooden spoon didn’t hurt.

He continued to slide further and further into himself, not sure exactly what he was looking for. He found nothing but darkness. Cold, empty blackness within the confines of his own mind. Vast. Silent. Lost in a pool of ink. He brushed his arms through the air, feeling nothing. He shouted, and heard nothing. But just when he was about to give up, return to the surface of the blackness with a gasping breath, and open his eyes – he saw something.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

A single line. Then more. And all of a sudden his world was bursting with color like the frayed end of a vibrant rope.

Everywhere lines of varying colors and shades, textures and thicknesses. Like a multicolored spider web stretching through the inky black of his inner mind, but infinitely more complex. No matter where he looked – up, down, left, right, inside, outside – there were more lines spanning to the very edges of his vision.

Threads, he realized.

Some of them connected to him, hundreds, perhaps thousands, flowing into his chest. But most passed by or were just glimpses at the far reaches of the void.

Nathan pushed a hand out, wrapping his fingers around the thickest of the chords that sunk into his chest. It was thick and taut, like a rope used on a well-worn sailboat. He couldn’t tell what it was or what it did, but he felt its power, its strength, moving into him. Connecting him to something, or something to him.

He pulled at it and then let go. It snapped back to place, reverberating a deep strumming sound through the void, like the plucked string of a guitar. A tremor ran through his body, feeling the vibration of the Thread. He felt a sudden intense wave of nausea. As if his brain were tossed in a blender. It threatened to overwhelm for several moments, but he kept his stomach under control.

The one he’d plucked had been the thickest going into him, and one of the thickest that he saw immediately around him, but far, far down below there were more.

Like the gnarled roots of an ancient tree, great chords of power crossed and stretched through the void. Calling them Threads seemed an insult to Nathan, they were arteries, leylines of power that held the pulse of the universe. He could feel a pressure from them. As David had said, it felt almost like a magnetic force. Each Thread gave one off, but the massive ones below were a different beast entirely, like comparing the gravity of a moon to that of a black hole.

Nathan peeled his eyes away from the leylines below him. He didn’t know how long he’d been within his own mind, if that was where he was. It would be quite embarrassing if he’d fallen unconscious and was drooling on himself in front of Cleo. He rushed back toward the surface.

The darkness left him and Nathan opened his eyes to find himself still standing in the middle of the tavern floor. The nausea was still there a bit, but at least Arnold had stopped hitting him. Arnold was watching him closely, stunned, his hand loose at his side. Even Cleo’s mocking laughs had stilled.

“What’s going on?” Nathan asked, slowly standing up straight. He let his arms holding the ball fall down to the side and rest. His muscles still burned something nasty. “Why do you all look like you just saw a ghost?”

“I… ah, I don’t know,” Arnold mumbled, eyes wide. “You certainly made a Veil.” Nathan could sense a ‘but’ coming. “...But you also did something else. Something more.” He smacked his lips, then swallowed. “I’m not quite sure what it was, to be honest. With a Veil it’s like your threads don’t give off any pressure, but… it almost felt like yours gave off a negative pressure.”

“Does it still feel that way”

Arnold shook his head, bushy eyebrows furrowing. “Nah, not anymore. Although you definitely have a Veil up now.” He gave a concerned half-smile and patted Nathan on the shoulder with a heavy hand.

Nathan paused, studying the man’s expression. He palmed the glass orb, tossing it up into the air – causing Arnold to wince – and then catching it. “So what you’re saying,” he said, a wry smile finding its way onto his face. He met Cleo’s eyes and gave a wink. “Is that I’m better than Cleo?”

***

Ten hours later, Nathan was in the middle of wiping down a wooden table soaked with ale. He wasn’t unused to menial physical labor. Assassination was largely a slow, tedious occupation. The long stretches of planning, research, and preparation were interrupted by short bursts of frenzied energy, and then it was back to the boring stuff.

The entire establishment was filled to bursting. Bodies on top of bodies stuffed into booths like sardines, Minerva and Arnold frantically pouring drinks and rushing out food from behind the counter, David cooking orders in the back. He and Cleo had been promoted to the highly prestigious roles of waiter and waitress.

Nathan finished wiping down the table. The man sitting at it was alone, strangely enough. He had broad shoulders, massive arms, and was dressed all in black with a hood drawn up, casting the upper part of his face in shadow. White hair poked out from within the hood, peeking over white eyebrows and puffy, bloodshot eyes.

If he was trying to be discrete, he was failing. Badly.

“Thanks.” The man’s voice rumbled and he slid a dirty silver coin atop the table with large, meaty fingers.

It was the first coin Nathan had made in this new world, and he quickly pocketed it. He nodded and then moved onto the next table, keeping an eye on the hooded figure.

The rest of the night passed uneventfully and soon Arnold was making the last call for drinks and kicking everyone out. Patrons got up, filing out into the starlight. All but the large, hooded man.

“You can’t stay here, son,” Arnold said to the man. Both Nathan and Cleo were watching him carefully. “Customers aren’t allowed inside once the doors are closed.”

A toothy grin and red eyes peered out from the dark hood. He curled his fingers into a fist atop the table. “That’s why I’m here now. Less eyes.”

A loud banging noise filled the tavern. Someone was hammering a fist on the front door.