Dovar swept away from the tower circling the cloister. Winter’s vicious venom struck all the harder for the rain now pelting the grounds. The once pristine courtyard of the cloister had been churned and was already soaking with mud. The beat of water slamming the ground sounded at once loud and muted from the soil, dulled by its own presence.
The gaping maw occupying most of the space was collapsing. How long would it take for the whole thing to come crashing down? A depression was spreading westward, tracking the passage of a cellar tunnel below. Water puddled at the bottom of the crater, Esmund’s attack far out-ranging anything Dovar had seen from him since he’d changed his Disciplines.
Sweeping with his tether-sense, he scoured the grounds. No others remained in the area, all having fled or died. He almost couldn’t find Sansir, buried in tile and dirt, matted with crud. His chest seeming a mockery of the hole that had taken the courtyard. A shiver ran through Dovar at the sight.
A hole. A gap. That was all warp was and all it could do. A vicious power. What had the Goddess been thinking giving it to them? But… perhaps it hadn’t been her who gifted it. Kirs seemed to waver on whether the limited mana typings appeared were natural or artificial.
I should go down to him. He almost did, but again he couldn’t find where Saleema was coalescing, only the inevitable draw of her spirit, still too dissolute to find. Dovar stretched out his senses further, but couldn’t find anyone near. Even the palace had been abandoned.
I should have asked Ranvir. His stomach twisted as he turned back toward the tower. His hair whipping his brow, wet clothes clinging to him tightly, chokingly. Tugging at his collar, he swept into the room.
“You’ll have to manage this mostly on your own,” Kirs said, worrying at her lip. “I’ve done what I can.”
Es, sitting fully clothed in the basin of serpent’s blood, the not-quite water sloshing oddly, almost seeming to have a texture to it. Others claimed they could see patterns in the liquid, but Dovar never had.
Grev turned toward him, pale-faced and haunted. His red-rimmed eyes were still slightly glazed, though he’d been fighting well enough. “She’s still to gather,” Dovar said, tightening his grip on his new sword. Bronze picked up from among the fallen alongside the sheath. It was of fine make but no match for his steel weapon, nor Saleema’s anything.
There wasn’t much fighter in Dovar when it came down to it.
He turned away, but felt the ritual activate. Guiding mana toward its center. This drew only from the ambient power, it seemed. Pulling it into the liquid. Es closed his eyes and his tether drew first down to the liquid, then hesitantly fully into himself. Ranvir had followed Grev into his tether-space, helping him achieve the third-stage, but Dovar was too far from such skill. He couldn’t even figure out where to begin.
Outside, Ayvir’s power ramped up. His usually silent and deathly rays roared angrily as rain vaporized on contact. Dovar turned to watch the attack. A dark line, ripping all light that touched it from the air. Droplets touching it exploded into steam or disappeared entirely, flashing brilliant white for a single moment.
The roaring fire of his Concept was burned deep into Ayvir’s power. Dovar had seen the effect when he’d struck Ranvir to stop him from killing another kid. Even when he attempted to stun, Ayvir had blinded him. It was only the full blessing of the Goddess that Master Stjarna could heal his sight.
Ayvir was not trying to stun today. A second sound soon slipped inside the vociferous shriek of the shower. The stentorian crack of bursting stone. The sudden heat shattering frostbitten rock. Pashar’s power soon flowed to fill the same area.
“She’s appeared then.” Grev’s voice felt a mirror in Sansir. Despite their terrible situation, he didn’t so much as twitch a muscle. “Nothing to do but wait.” He folded into a squat, long fingers hanging limp over his knees. His power was a bare spark compared to the bonfire running through the masters outside.
Dovar glanced over his shoulder to find Kirs fretting. She shivered from the cold as she looked from Es and out the hole. She had a harried look on her face, then. Her hair in disarray, her features worn deeper, as if she’d aged more the last hour than the previous five years.
Grev sat still. He had an air of impatience, despite the lack of movement. He could join Ayvir’s stream of attacks, but his Concept was not heat nor was he as skilled as the master.
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Dovar turned to Kirs, stepping carefully around the ritual. After father had one of his rages, Dovar would often find Asny nearby. She was too kind-hearted by far for this world. Aching, both outside and in, she would sit nearby and talk. Ask him something. It took him too long to figure out what she was doing, asking about his interests to move his mind away from the past.
Despite being half his age, she’d become a pillar for him. Something he’d never managed to reciprocate. Not yet, at least. There was still hope, this ritual.
“How does it work?”
Kirs looked up, shocked and confused. Grev didn’t twitch from his perch.
“It’s helps connect with the realm or power or whatever turns someone into a master.” She fell silent again, picking at a nail. It was already torn to the skin, and she winced each time she passed over it.
“How?”
She stirred again. “Its like the effect of my awakening ritual. Sort of second awakening, only I tried to strengthen it. It’s difficult, serpent’s blood is diffuse, I think.” She winced, this time at her own lack of knowledge. “Normally, the ritual has way more parameters and guidelines, much more focused. This inserts no guides. Es will have to manage everything on his own.”
“Why this way?”
She looked down, rubbing her hands together, then picking at a callous on her finger. From holding a pen too much. The notion brought a snort from Dovar, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“You don’t think it’s weird? Saleema’s been around for centuries, hundreds of years. And no other tethered has achieved like she has? Excepting, perhaps, her own father. Thousands of masters never once seeing a path forward, beyond what they’d already reached? I figured it must be because the next step requires help from outside your soul.”
“Most masters don’t even know how they advanced,” Dovar said.
Kirs nodded. “Grevor spoke of a place when he advanced to master. Though it sounds like he could only handle that space briefly and shallowly, but that exposure was enough. He was now a master. I asked Es, and he mentioned the same thing before stepping in. I couldn’t get a straight answer from any of the triplet masters, unfortunately. Now it appears they are all dead.”
She looked up, running a hand across her hair, as if to check it was in place. She came away dissatisfied. “During Awakening, and I’ve seen it myself now, we also see something reaching out to us. That little connection grows until we become masters, then maybe we need to reinforce it, or find a different path. Serpent’s blood opened it once. It should be able to do it again.”
Grevor slumped over, nearly falling out of the tower. Dovar startled. “His head?” he asked. Ayvir and Pashar were still working outside. Cautiously, he went over and checked. Grev lay slumped on the floorboards, still curled together as if he was squatting. A thin stream of blood running from his mouth.
“His pulse is still going,” Dovar said, turning to look at Kirs.
He staggered and fell, slamming his knees into the boards and onto his side. He blinked at the searing against his back and coughed. It was barely louder than a whimper. Strangely, though he was in pain, he didn’t hurt. Kirs looked beyond him with horrified eyes.
Bare, dark feet stepped over him, blood dripping from her right hand. Saleema raised a finger to her lips, shushing Kirs, who stared in fear, mouth agape. She wore a big outer coat and not much else. Black fingers had crept onto her neck, visible above the coat’s collar.
“Your theory is sound, Scholar. A brilliant work, especially for someone so weak.” She spoke in clear modern Elusrian, Dovar noted idly. His stomach was getting warm. That was also strange. “Unfortunately, you’re quite wrong. See the…” she floundered. “Liquid? What do you call it?”
“Serpent’s blood.”
Saleema snorted, her manic eyes wide, yet she sounded… normal. A slight accent, but Dovar wouldn’t have been able to pick her voice out from any other Ankirian foreigner. He lost his balance for a moment, though… he was already lying down, right?
“Horribly wrong. Mixing myths.” She ‘tsked’ and shook her head. “The serpent’s blood shrinks way up when it solidifies. You could fit the tub on your fingernail. You’d need a lot more if you wanted to access the Goddess’ power.”
The night’s chill stole over him in sudden fervor, yet he didn’t shake. He didn’t need to. The understanding was dim and faraway.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I haven’t decided,” she confessed. “Whether you will work for me, or just die like the others.” Her tone grew cold and dead like Grev’s. “One move, and the girl dies.”
“What? Who?” Kirs, it was so dark in the room, blinked and looked around. Saleema kicked the tub.
“The dear young man in the blood. He will have to die, of course.”
Dovar didn’t close his eyes, yet the world faded nonetheless.
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The street was far from the chaos that engulfed the rest of the city, yet it seemed perhaps more desolate. Signs of life were everywhere, abandoned carts, drinks on tables of the many establishments, candles lit in windowsills, a single trail of blood footprints.
The trail carved through the street beyond the square of the First Queen, fur-clad with weapon-raised. Further still to the square beyond, where Grevor first showed Ranvir, Esmund, and Sansir the age old tradition of looking up her skirt.
Beyond it, through the streets of restaurants, bars, and pubs, the second home of the many nobles in the city. Shadows huddled in these windows, people too scared—or too wise—to return home. The trail continued into the next square. A depression near twenty feet deep, four sets of channels and four sets of steps carved into it. At the center of the pit stood a pedestal, the dust perfectly outlining a square set into its center. Dust and a single drop of blood.