Retribution, p.43
Retribution, page 43
Mom crossed the hallway, her hand feathering through Arthur’s hair. “We are never promised another day,” she said somberly. Then she half turned to look at me. “But we have today, and there is so much we can do with it.”
Emily was waiting for us in Gideon’s lab, a large room chock-full of tables, shelves, buzzing equipment, and stacks of notes, all warmed by a large firesalt furnace on one side. She gave me a quizzical look, which then moved to Arthur questioningly. He only nodded, so she shrugged, turned around, and led Arthur, Mom, and me through an arched opening across from us, down a flight of stairs, and to a specific door.
I glanced around the featureless hall, trying to map it out compared to the classroom above, curious about the strength of my beast-bonded senses.
The door opened to Emily’s touch, and she led us into a plain, dimly lit chamber. A circle of runes had been carved into the floor and filled with silvery metal that glowed faintly, and some kind of artifact had been constructed just outside the circle. A single table was pushed against one wall, and a seemingly random assortment of items sat atop it.
The master artificer, Gideon, was fiddling with the equipment, while the retainer, Lyra Dreide, sat with her back against the curved walls and perused some kind of old tome.
“About time,” Gideon mumbled, sparing me only a cursory glance. “The sister, huh? Well, I suppose there are worse people you could have been spending all your time with. She’s not quite an ideal candidate though, is she? Dark orange core, a beast tamer—no idea how that interacts with the bestowment, if at all—and barely a child. A more mature test subject would be—”
“I’m a Leywin,” I said firmly, cutting across his criticism. “My brother and I both had to mature fast.” Of course, there was the small detail of Arthur already being well into adulthood, mentally, when he was born into our family, but I didn’t know how many people were aware of that fact. “I’m ready for this.”
“O-ho, are you?” Gideon asked, leaving off his work and leaning toward me. “Ready to have a potentially potent spell writ into your flesh by unknown and hostile magics, a spell that will certainly be unlike any magic your small mind has conceived of previously and could very well kill you if you don’t do exactly as you are told?”
My lips parted to assure him that I was indeed ready for exactly that, but I choked on the words. It had all been well and good arguing for this from the safety of our rooms above, but now, down here in the dark, seeing Emily dressed in her strange ceremonial robes, her fingers unconsciously tracing the lines of a black staff, I was suddenly nervous.
“She is,” Arthur said, stepping up beside me and resting a hand on my shoulder.
A swelling of warm pride eased my nerves and unwound the knot forming at the back of my throat.
Emily approached, giving me a comforting smile, and slipped her arm through mine. “You’ll be fine, I’m sure. Arthur has already told you what is going to happen?”
I nodded as she led me to the center of the circle of runes. She gestured to the ground, and so I sat, my legs crossed and arms resting on my knees, and looked up at her. She only smiled again before moving to the table, where she slid some kind of bracelet over her wrist, then picked up the staff.
“Mrs. Leywin, if you’ll stand back,” she asked respectfully. Mom seemed hesitant, and I felt certain she was starting to regret supporting this, but she did as Emily requested.
My brother, on the other hand, kneeled down beside me, just outside of the runes. His golden eyes met mine, and he winked. “Maximum aether exposure,” he explained quietly.
Gideon had pulled a notebook and pen from his robes and was writing furiously. The retainer was standing silently against the wall opposite my mother.
Emily’s shadow crossed over me as she moved around to stand behind my back. I could feel her looming, and my instinct to move or turn flared, causing goosebumps to roughen the skin of my arms and neck.
“Ellie, we expect this might be painful,” Emily said, her tone sour, like she didn’t like what she had to say. “A mark was received easily by a veteran mage, but even a crest struck Master Gideon like a blow, knocking the breath from him. If you receive a stronger spellform…”
“Then the effect on my body will be stronger as well,” I finished for her, staring down at the shimmering runes in front of me.
“Yes.” There was a pause, then, “Are you ready?”
I clenched my teeth together and forced myself to sit up straight. I wasn’t afraid of pain. “Yes.”
Behind me, I heard Emily begin to move, the fabric of the heavy robes scuffing against itself, the butt of the staff clicking against rock, a long exhale…
The light in the room changed. There was a subtle glow, probably from crystal at the top of the staff.
Then every muscle in my body seized.
I jerked, my back locked into an uncomfortable arch, my mouth open, a moan halfway to my lips, my fingers clawing into my thighs, my eyes wide, so wide they burned and filled with tears.
It felt like a brand, like red-hot iron pressed against the base of my spine that set fire to every nerve in my whole body.
I snapped like an overpulled bowstring, the paralysis breaking, the moan turning into a weak scream as I crumpled to the cold floor, sucking in a feeble breath, fighting my own lungs, which refused to move air.
Mom said something, a panicky warbling that came in and out of focus, followed by Arthur’s commanding baritone.
My lids dragged themselves shut, and in the dark, everything was worse. No, not worse, just more. I tried to open my eyes, but I couldn’t. I wanted to ask for help, but my tongue wasn’t following instructions. And the weight of the sensation grew, a building pressure centered on the small of my back.
A powerful hand had me by the shoulder, dragging me up into a sitting position, but I was only dimly aware of it, as if it was happening in the last remnants of a dream just as I woke.
Mana crashed over me, wave after wave, like nothing I’d ever felt before.
My eyes snapped open. Two golden orbs like little suns hovered just above me, moving rapidly in tiny bursts.
My core trembled, and I thought I might be sick.
Then it did something I have no words for, and I knew I was dying, because even when the asura’s blade ran me through I had still felt like myself, still been present for the pain in my body, but now, with stunning suddenness, the pain was gone, and I felt nothing but its absence.
“She’s going into shock,” a lilting, honeyed voice said firmly, and the golden eyes vanished, replaced by flame-red tresses. “Eleanor, focus on my voice. Think and take the meaning of my words. Your core is being rapidly clarified, and your body is struggling to adjust. It will be over soon, but you must stay present. Your mind and your thoughts guide the process. Stay here, with my voice.”
I felt my face scrunching up in confusion as my brain struggled not with the meaning of the words, but to make sense of the strangeness of the situation: an Alacryan retainer, a woman responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Dicathians, was now sincerely guiding me through a process we had stolen from her people…
And I think it was exactly this that snapped me out of the cold spiral I had been following. My breath came easier and sensation returned. I became aware of the cold stone pressing against my legs and rear, and of the sweat clinging to my face, and the deep ache in my muscles due to the sudden clenching and releasing, and finally the hands holding either side of my face firmly, forcing me to look into the retainer’s eyes.
A slight smile broke across her face, and she let me go. I leaned forward, pressing my hands to the ground and drawing in slow, steady breaths. A hand rubbed gently at my back, between my shoulder blades.
“Eleanor, we need to look,” the retainer said. I could only nod in reply.
I felt the hem of my shirt being tugged up as Lyra shifted around me, then Mom was there, her hands resting on top of mine. Her eyes followed the retainer at first, but then snapped to my own. They were full of tears about to fall, but there was a quivering smile on her face.
“So, it is true,” the retainer said quietly, her voice full of awe and reverence. “A regalia. It…should not be possible.”
Sliding one hand free, I reached behind me and rubbed the skin of my lower back where the spellform still tingled.
“And look at that. It’s pushed her clear to the light-yellow stage,” Gideon said.
My heart thumped inside my chest, and I turned my attention inward. He was right!
Despite the aching and the fatigue, I knew what came next, and I couldn’t wait to begin. “I…want to test it,” I said around a dry lump in my throat.
“We can wait,” Mom said, but Gideon was already moving.
He shooed everyone else back and activated the artifact. A transparent bubble of mana shimmered to life over the circle, cutting me off from the others.
“Gideon,” my brother said with a note of warning, but Gideon ignored him as well.
Standing in front of me, just on the other side of the shield with a notebook in hand and eyes gleaming with curiosity, Gideon said, “Well, go on then!”
The retainer began to coach me through the process, explaining how to look for the rune, what it should feel like. Cautiously, I followed her instructions.
The rune bloomed into warmth and power as mana channeled into it from my core, and I waited for some revelation, some power to manifest itself.
And it wasn’t that nothing happened; there was a certain focusing in on the mana like I was more aware of everyone’s cores and the barrier of mana manifested into the shield, but that was it.
“Perhaps you aren’t able to channel enough mana to properly activate the regalia,” Lyra mused as I explained what I was feeling.
“Here, try this,” Gideon said as he disabled the dome-shaped shield and handed me a large mana crystal, then reactivated the shield again. “Draw on it.”
I glanced at Arthur, who was watching everything carefully, then at Mom, who had both hands over her mouth and practically vibrated with nervous energy.
Closing my eyes, I pulled on the mana trapped inside the crystal and directed it down into the spellform. The sensation of awareness returned, and it felt easier than I remembered to draw on the mana crystal, but no additional effects revealed themselves. I released my control over both crystal and rune with a sigh.
“What am I doing wrong—”
Emily, who had been leaning against the table while everything else was happening, gave a soft moan and collapsed. Arthur moved so quickly I barely saw it, catching her before her head could hit the hard stone and then laying her down gently.
My mother was there only a second later, both hands pressing against Emily’s pale skin. Mom’s hands gave off a silver glow as she cast some healing spell, but it cut off quickly. She exchanged a look with Arthur as she explained, “She’s put herself into a state of backlash. I can’t heal her, but she should be all right, given time.”
Gideon shifted his weight from one foot to the other and bit his lip to stay quiet. Seemingly without thinking, he flipped the switch, turning off the shield that contained me within the runes.
I went to Emily’s side, kneeling next to my brother and taking her hand. Her eyes fluttered open, but she groaned in pain and closed them again.
There was something…uncomfortable about being near here. The enhanced awareness of mana I’d felt when activating the regalia remained, and the absence of mana in Emily’s core stood out as something wrong or unnatural, something that needed to be corrected—
Mana flowed out of me in white loops, glowing across my skin like an aura, and then maneuvered to Emily’s body, into and through her veins, all the way to her core.
Her ragged breathing softened, and her eyes fluttered open. “Oh!” she gasped, flustered. “G-good morning?”
The light of the mana exchange faded.
Gideon’s pen was scribbling furiously in his notebook, but everyone was quiet as they all turned to stare at me, wide-eyed.
What I had just done, it shouldn't be possible.
409
TASTE OF MAGIC
CECILIA
My insides seethed with nausea as the tempus warp returned us to Taegrin Caelum.
I had failed. Now, I somehow had to face Agrona and explain that failure. The Legacy had been defeated by a common Scythe.
Draneeve was waiting for us with a number of attendants. The crimson-haired, half-mad mage bowed deeply as I stepped down, arm in arm with Nico, off the reception platform. “Welcome home, Scythe Nico and Lady Cecilia. The High Sovereign is waiting for you.”
Despite the bone-deep exhaustion that had settled over me, requiring a full day of rest before I could even face the tempus warp, I knew there was no escaping this summons.
Nico knew as well. “Maybe he can help you understand what happened at Aedelgard?” he asked consolingly.
In my previous life, my handlers and the train of scientists and ki-optimization specialists they paraded through my life hadn’t understood what I was—not really. Even the name they gave me, “the Legacy,” seemed born from myth or legend, a term not of their own invention.
But Agrona, he understood me. He saw beyond the constraints of his own perception, and by doing so he gained knowledge that was inaccessible to others. But he shared little of what he saw, and he needed to work around my still-human mind, and so we progressed slowly and only when he decided I was ready for more.
“I am ready,” I said, more in answer to my own thoughts than Nico’s question.
Draneeve spun away, his unkempt crimson mop of hair splashing along in his wake. The other attendants—Imbuers, healers, Sentries, anyone who might have been needed on my return—fell into line behind us wordlessly like a flock of ducks mindlessly following their leader.
My eyes were blind to the passing halls of the fortress. Unconsciously, I stared at Draneeve’s crimson and black uniform, the sight of him tethering me like a leash so that my feet could follow where he led, but my thoughts were in Sehz-Clar, stuck there as if a part of me hadn’t really left. I wished to understand why the barrier resisted me. No other mana that I had encountered was outside of my control, not even the purified particles within the bodies of other living beings.
And yet, somehow, Seris had found some way to bind the mana so completely that it resisted even my influence. Not only that, but even an omnidirectional bombardment on multiple fronts from thousands of powerful mages hadn’t shaken anything loose, either. And then there was the Scythe herself…I had already known she was dangerous. All the other Scythes regarded her with a wary combination of respect and fear. Now, I understood why.
At my full strength, I knew that I could have overpowered the mana void technique she used. But I hadn’t been at my full power, and so had allowed her to overwhelm me and push me back.
At least I eliminated her retainer, I thought, but it was a small victory, and there was no pride or pleasure in it.
Draneeve stepped aside at the top of a stair that led down into the lower research levels. Nico was eyeing the stairs apprehensively, like a child afraid of the dark. I wanted to ask him what was wrong, but then glanced again at Draneeve and all the attendants. No, I could ask when we were alone. I didn’t want to draw attention to Nico’s discomfort, and remembering the mana core he had been hiding, I put two and two together.
“The High Sovereign will look for you where the phoenix roosts,” Draneeve said, his voice gravelly, his eyes darting and uncomfortable.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, confused by the unnecessary dramatization.
“I know the way,” Nico replied quickly. “You are dismissed, Draneeve.”
Nico took my arm again and led me toward the stairs. I glanced over my shoulder one last time, frowning at Draneeve and the other attendants, but got no more answers from them.
“It was a message,” Nico said after a moment, his voice very low, almost a whisper. “Agrona knows I met her. He…might even know about the core I took.”
“Oh,” I said, then, “Met who?”
“One of his prisoners, an asuran woman. A phoenix. After I was…after you healed me.”
The stairs were cramped enough that it was uncomfortable to walk side by side, and so I slowed, falling into step behind Nico, looking down on him from above. The lower we went, the darker the stairs became, until the black stone steps were almost indistinguishable from the shadows. “Why would it matter that you’ve met this phoenix? Did something happen?” I said after a minute.
Nico’s steps stuttered, and he started to turn around to look up at me. Whatever he was thinking, though, he quickly smothered it and resumed the slow descent. “No.”
I let out a little laugh, but stopped when the darkness swallowed the sound. “I don’t see the problem, Nico.”
“Just…don’t say anything about the core? Even if he knows I took it, don’t admit you know?”
“But I could—”
He stopped his descent fully this time, and I nearly ran into the back of him. “Please?”
“All right,” I said, reaching out to lay a hand on the top of his head but stopping myself. Such little acts of intimacy still gave me horrible, wrenching nausea that I couldn’t escape. Damned body, I thought, suddenly angry. “But you shouldn’t fear him so much,” I snapped, venting that anger on the only target I had. “He isn’t a threat to you. Agrona is the key to our future.”
Nico’s shoulders went stiff, and he curled in on himself ever so slightly, and I bit my tongue. Guilt and regret immediately overshadowed my anger. Seris’s words had shaken him, I knew. I could tell the moment she uttered the foul lie—telling us that Agrona didn’t have the power to send us back to our lives—that it had taken root in Nico’s mind, and I had watched it grow in him as he watered it with his thoughts and attention.
