Kings Game

Chapter 88 - Blood and Steel

"It will be worth it," said Nul, their eyes never leaving the prosthetic.

Kell grumbled. "Fine, whatever."

She began pouring more of herself into the hunk of steel. Kell had been using focus markings for most of her life at this point. She didn't need to seek out the sigil that would accept her energy. She didn't need to close her eyes and concentrate. She didn't need to imagine a stream of her own life force flowing into the design. All she had to do was let instinct take over and dump energy into the new etching until it did something interesting.

Kell poured more and more of her energy into the new designs until something interesting happened. The world wavered and Kell stumbled. She was covered in goosebumps and the taste of copper entered her mouth. The only time this happened was when she was overextending herself, when she was pushing her etchings despite her body not being able to support them.

Kell staggered backwards before Nul could catch her. She bit her tongue and the world snapped back into place. She'd experienced this feeling before and she wasn't going to show weakness in front of Nul.

Fighting off a wave of nausea, Kell rubbed her face. Wiping her mouth and brushing her hair back, Kell stood upright and put her hands on her hip.

"Now what? Is the etching working?"

Nul stared at her, wide eyed. Their lips were locked in place, stuck halfway between a smile and a gasp.

"It worked," they said, their voice hushed and their tone reverent. "It actually worked."

"I don't feel any different," said Kell. She crossed her arms, tapping her fingers on an elbow. She was still disoriented and fighting herself to not show it. She could feel the drain of an etching but she wasn't about to let Nul know she was struggling. Instead, she scowled at Nul.

After watching her for a moment, Nul said, "Kell, can you redo your ponytail?"

"What, why?" Kell asked. She hated doing her ponytail. Karyn used to do it for her, oiling it into a tidy bundle and tying it with a strip of leather, but since her wife's passing, Kell had either gotten one of the Sunridge people to help her or resorted to tying it up in a loose mess with her single hand.

"Humor me."

"Fine."

Though her head was still spinning, Kell pulled out the tie, closed her eyes, and set about tying her hair back. It had been long enough since she'd done it herself that she had to resort to muscle memory, to movements hammered into since long before she'd met Roran or even Nul.

She combed her hair out with her fingers before gathering it in a tight bundle behind her head. She started wrapping the tie around the pony when Nul said, "Stop moving!"

Kell froze, her eyebrow shooting up in a silent question.

"You're using two hands," said Nul.

"But I only..." Kell trailed off. Nul was right. She was using two hands. One was holding her hair in a pony while the other held the leather tie. It was an action she'd done a thousand times before. One that felt perfectly natural.

In her left hand, the hand that had been forcibly removed by the Uhlaran interrogators, she held her own hair. She could feel the strands against her skin, she could feel the warmth of her own scalp, she could feel the trembling of her own skeleton as she stood there in awe.

"I have a hand."

(2)

Kell let her hair fall loose and held both of her hands in front of her. One was her old calloused hand of flesh and bone. The other was a shimmering mold of steel. The surface was smooth and reflective, moving like a liquid. Each finger moved exactly as it should. There was no stiffness or imperfections. Kell had two perfectly functioning hands.