Toren Daen
The thug reeled to the side, a streak of crimson blood spraying out from where Wade had clocked him. The knife he held toward me slipped from his suddenly weak fingers, falling in slow motion to the snow below.
Before it could even hit the ground, I slammed the full force of my telekinesis into the earth behind me. I rocketed forward in a flare of white, the power of my push blowing a curtain of snow in my wake.
I reached out with my hand, latching onto the collar of the thug's grimy tunic before he could even blink. He flailed in confusion, his head wound disorienting his balance.
I wasn't about to make that any easier. I turned, using the momentum from my forward rush and a twist of my shoulder to slam the man into the ground hard. He bounced off the stone, the sickening crack of something breaking from the impact echoing into the quiet night. My firm grip on his throat shoved him back into the indent he'd made in the snow.
I drew my dagger with my wounded left hand, wincing at the pain of clenching my fist around its hilt. I knelt over the downed man, one hand on his throat and another with a dagger poised over his eye. My knee locked his chest and arm firmly in place, and with my enhanced strength I knew he wasn't going anywhere.
The thug gasped for breath, a wheezing, rickety sound, then groaned in pain. A speck of blood spattered from his mouth as he coughed, hacking for air.
I might've damaged one of his lungs with how hard I threw this druggie into the dirt. I could've broken his spine.
I didn't care.
I spared a quick glance at my surroundings, unwilling to let myself be caught off guard again. Wade was ferrying the young boy over to his mother, who was completely focused on her child. Naereni was still tending to Greahd. Whatever the other thug had done had clearly hurt the woman somehow.
That only stoked my anger higher, matching the heat of the cookfires around me.
"How did you find me so fast?" I hissed to the man I had pinned.
The man's vision cleared for a moment, but he looked at my poised dagger with a terrified expression. He whimpered underneath me, wriggling slightly before I pressed my knee harder onto his chest.
Considering what I felt give way under the pressure, I knew I had broken a few of his ribs. He wailed in pain, and I immediately let off.
"Look," I whispered lowly. "I don't need to kill you. You don't need to be in pain for too long. But you are going to tell me how you found me."
I had only been visible for less than half an hour. The fact that this man attacked me so quickly told me that Blood Joan had a better network in East Fiachra than I was led to believe.
"Don't kill me, man! It wasn't personal! I know what I said, but I take it back! Please!"
I grit my teeth, my patience wearing thin quickly. I hissed, snapping the next words. "Tell me!"
My blade, hovering just over his eye, began to drip with blood. The wound on my hand was still leaking, and the stream had slowly meandered down my glittering steel. My blood slowly fell from the tip of my blade, dripping just under the thug's eye.
"I just saw you dancing around!" He whimpered between gasps of pain. I could distinctly smell the stench of urine from the man, whatever motley courage he'd plucked up gone with the wind. "It was an accident! They promised me!"
Drip, drip, drip. The blood ran down my knife, my grip quivering as I held it over his face. Does your hand shake from the pain, or making the threat? A voice inside me asked. I forcefully suppressed it, knowing I couldn't afford introspection right now The man kept saying they'd 'promised him.' What was he talking about?
"What did the Joans promise you?" I said, leaning over. My breath fogged in the night air, lending a supernatural chill to my tone.
"They said they'd supply my fix for the rest of my life!" He cried, beginning to openly weep. "If I killed you! They'd give me enough blithe to drown in!"
I blinked, taken aback by the statement. But another matter took my attention away from the thug.
I felt an urgent hand on my shoulder shaking me. Wade was there, but he wasn't looking at me. He was nervously scanning the crowd around him, which had been watching with silent fear for the last minute of interrogation.
"What?" I snapped, angry at having the one blissful moment I had experienced in this world shattered. I remembered that dance, where I held hands with these people. It brought the closest thing I'd felt to happiness since coming to this world.
My anger shifted to anxiety as I took in the people around us again. Where before they all watched with pure fear, now there was a hint of hunger in many of their eyes.
'They'd give me enough blithe to drown in,' the man said. How many of the people surrounding me were blithe addicts? And how willing were they to attack an armed mage?
I saw it there, in many of their eyes. It wasn't the hunger of a predator stalking his prey. No, this was the ravenous gleam of a man who had been starving for weeks and was ready to take desperate measures for a meal.
Some of the other people were backing away, clearly recognizing danger when they saw it. A few young women were moving Greahd to her wagon, taking chance glances behind me. The mother with her son was among them, a worried look on her face. Naereni was still with them, but it looked like she was ready to cut her way through the people surrounding me.
I slowly stood, peering around me. I could get out of this, but Wade couldn't. He had no physical enhancement runes to speak of, and I highly doubted a small mob after blithe would be selective in their mage targets.
I kicked the man below me one final time in the ribs for good measure, leaving him to groan in pain. Then I squared my shoulders, staring cooly at the men that surrounded us. Maybe around ten people seemed interested in whatever deal the Joans offered the man whimpering at my feet. Twice that number was backing away with increased haste, showing good sense.
I could take ten nonmages. I could do that easily. But could I do it protecting Wade? Without lethal force?
"Toren..." Wade said nervously, shuffling on his feet.
"Don't worry," I said quietly. "We'll get out of this."
I cracked my neck, then reoriented my dagger. The blood leaking from my hand was coating it now. "You don't want to do this," I said, distorting my voice with sound magic. It took on an unnatural quality, resonating strangely and breaking every few syllables into different octaves.
If there was something I knew inspired fear, it was the uncanny valley. And what I just did to my voice sank into the deepest depths of that trench. Wade flinched away from me, clearly taken aback by the shift in tone.
"Maybe we do," one man said from the side. I oriented on him slowly, causing the man to shrink under my attention. "Don't know until we hear what that bloke has to say," he finished meekly, but speaking up seemed to instill courage into the men around him.
It was time to stomp out that bravery.
Fireballs slowly popped into existence around me, one after the other. There were ten men, and so ten flickering orbs of flame orbited me and Wade in a small radius. The men around us flinched back.
I stepped forward, capitalizing on the withdrawal. Wade, thankfully, had started to figure out my plan, and trailed behind me silently.
Drip, drip, drip. My blood leaked into the snow.
As the fireballs trailed around my head, I walked forward without a trace of the hesitance and nerves I felt inside. I flared my killing intent, pressing down on the people around me. The men parted in front of me, my show of power and flex of intent breaking their resolve.
Naereni fell in lockstep behind me, following me as I slowly left the community bonfires. The weight of their stares–some hostile, some fearful, none sympathetic–rested on my shoulders like a mantle of steel, the emotions potent even from far away. I kept the fireballs hovering around me for a minute or two, then extinguished them when we were out of sight.
The three of us ducked into an alleyway, and the young ice caster quickly checked our rears. It didn't look like anybody had followed us.
"What in the Vritra's name happened?" Naereni asked, a look of anger on her face. Her black hair had managed to escape its short braid, and she had to fight it back behind her ears. "Why were they all looking like you were meat and they were carallians that had just spawned in a zone?"
"You didn't hear the mook?" I asked, my look hollow.
"I was busy setting Greahd's shoulder. When that one brute pushed her to the ground, she landed on it wrong. It was dislocated. I didn't hear what the man had to say."
I sighed, massaging my eyes and the bridge of my nose. "He said... he said that Blood Joan promised him a lifetime supply of blithe if he killed me. A bunch of the men found that offer interesting."
I could visibly see the pain in Naereni's face as she heard what I had to say. She wilted, like a flower that was left too long in the cold. "They turned on you so fast," she said sadly.
I closed my eyes. They had turned on me remarkably fast. I knew, at least intellectually, what addiction could do to a person. To their principles and morals. But to witness it firsthand; to be on the receiving end of such reversed personalities?
I had danced with a few of those men not five minutes before, laughing along as others played the drums. And how quickly had they been ready to spill my blood?
"I joined the Rats because I wanted this to change," Naereni said, a forlorn look on her face. "I was the one who convinced Greahd to start sharing her cooking around; gathering people to play music and dance. If we were a community, the drugs wouldn't rip them apart anymore."
She blinked back wetness around her eyes. "But it's still the same."
Wade rested a comforting hand on Naereni's shoulder. "It's not the same, Naereni. I grew up here. It was so, so much worse before this. You know that. This is just a setback, yeah? And we're going to take down the Joans soon, too. We know where everything's made: they won't be able to do this to us again."
I was bandaging my hand–finally–when I caught on to the words Wade said. "You're going to attack the Joans soon?" I asked, pausing mid-wrap. "That sounds a lot more definitive than what Karsien was hinting at."
Wade looked a bit sheepish, adjusting his glasses. "Well, see, the thing is that Karsien doesn't know we know where all the warehouses and the distillery are. But what he knows can't hurt him," the young sentry said.
"I'll tell him right before our operation," Naereni said. "I'm not going to leave him in the dark indefinitely. Not like he did to me." She turned to me. "I– I wasn't so sure about you before this, Toren. You're going to leave once the Joans are dealt with, so I didn't see why I should trust you."
I held back a frown. I could see her point. I wasn't exactly planning on staying with this crew. It didn't build the best sense of camaraderie when you knew one of your teammates was only staying with you as a means to an end.
"And I didn't like how quickly Karsien let you in. But," Naereni continued, "You're not so bad, Toren. Standing up to that thug holding the boy hostage showed me that. You're not like every other Blood around here, even if you technically are one. I'm... I'm sorry for doubting you."
I flashed back to when that man had held the boy hostage. I had trouble thinking; moving and acting only on instinct.
I finished tying off my bandage, making sure it was secure. "Apology accepted," I replied. "I get why you'd be wary of me. But I do think what you're doing is good."
I didn't like being doubted, but it was the logical feeling, in my opinion.
"That being said," Naereni began again, emboldened by my acceptance. "We–Wade and I–are planning to hit the Joans where it hurts: in their drug distillery and all the warehouses where they have stock. Before, I was the only striker who could actually infiltrate. But with you on board, our chances of success double. At least."
I remembered the desperation I saw in those blithe addict's eyes as they surrounded me, like starving animals getting a whiff of food.
Part of my mind hadn't viewed them as human. At that moment, they were beasts, just like any other in the Clarwood Forest. And I had treated them as such, warding them off with fire as a caveman did a wolf.
My gut was a mix of negative emotions regarding that, and I didn't know which was most prominent. Disgust at myself for seeing those people as less than human. Pain at being so quickly turned on, the smallest sense of bliss I had experienced since coming to this world tainted by betrayal. And anger at the Joans for putting the men in such a desperate state of mind.
I would focus on that anger. Center myself with it.
It didn't take much time for me to consider the offer. "I'm in," I said. I couldn't refuse. "It'll be good to give Blood Joan a black eye again, and even better to do some good at the same time."
Naereni beamed, rounding on Wade. "Alright, that's one recruited. Do you think we've got better chances now?"
Wade sighed. "Yeah, yeah. I still say we need at least one more mage for this, though."
Naereni began to scale a nearby building rooftop in quick hops, bounding up the side using ice daggers as makeshift picks. "We won't need another mage if I'm there! I can get in and out of anywhere."
"Except your own messes," Wade muttered.
I wall-jumped up the alley after the ice striker. It was a precautionary measure: we left footprints that were easy to track on the ground, so the Rats preferred the rooftops.
Unfortunately, Wade had to use the stairs.
—
A couple of hours later, I was carefully sifting through a small pile of books. My room was lit by a low lamp, fending off the dark. I could only hope it would be enough to read by.
The book that looked the most interesting to me, at least off the top of the pile, was Treatise on the Four Elements of Mana in Relation to their Natural Counterparts, by Professor Frontfrost. I had asked Wade for a book on mana theory, as grounding my knowledge in familiar concepts would help me in every aspect of control, even if my teacher was an asura.
Furthermore, I enjoyed using my magic. The rush of mana flooding my mana veins, of the power and freedom it granted me, was something I wanted to hone even further. So I did one of the things I knew best: I read a book.
It seemed I would be learning which came first: the element or the mana affinity. There has to be some sort of philosophical debate about that, I thought again.
The Unseen World washed over my vision, revealing Lady Dawn peering at the titles laid out on the table. Her hands were clasped behind her back, but she looked over the books.
One was called Aldoreth's Encyclopedia of Stars, and had a nice, leather-bound cover. It was clearly an old tome, as the paper was yellowing and worn. The title was inscribed in silverish ink over the front, seeming to shimmer like the book's namesake in the sky.
Another was Catalogue of the Constellations' Movement Across Alacrya, which wasn't quite as high quality as the previous tome. Nonetheless, I hoped the asura would enjoy it.
Lady Dawn had left it up to me to guess what books I should rent for her, and I had taken a gamble on stars. She didn't look angry, which I thought was a point in my favor.
The phoenix pointed a delicate finger at the encyclopedia of stars. She hesitated, but only for a moment. "Contractor, I would like this book set up for me."
Interesting way to ask for help, I mused internally. I did so anyways, gingerly avoiding jostling my hand. It hurt, but even a couple hours in I could notice some of the healing.
As I propped the book up nearby, keeping it close for whenever I needed to turn a page for my feathered companion, I spared another look at my wounded hand. It would probably take a couple of days to fully heal, as opposed to the many weeks it would have otherwise required.
I remembered how the dagger went through my hand. My mana veins were more prominent than my mana channels, so it took more time than I'd like to direct mana from my core to the rest of my body. That was why I hadn't created a mana shroud in time to deflect the blow.
Though I had a minor healing factor since coming to this world, I had always assumed it was a part of Lady Dawn's soul latching onto mine, or whatever had happened to reincarnate me. But as I learned more about magic, I realized how rare healing of the strength I had actually was. Furthermore, I had the healing before I had formed my Bond with Lady Dawn.
I still felt her presence in the back of my mind, always there but never listening. It was a strange aspect of our connection that I felt nervous to even think about, but now I was considering all I knew.
"Lady Dawn," I started. "I heal really, really fast. I always thought that was because of our connection, but that's starting to make less sense to me." I paused. "Am I mistaken, or?"
Lady Dawn turned to me from the page she had been scanning over. She considered me for a brief moment, her eyes catching on my wounded hand for a moment. "You are correct in your assumptions, Contractor, though only partially."
I raised a brow. "Partially how? I mean, which part am I wrong about?"
The phoenix's shade tilted her head. "Not wrong, just... lacking information. Our initial connection caused your ability to heal to manifest, as it did not exist before. My presence in your core brought... latent ancestry to the surface, though not fully."
I blinked, quickly realizing what she was implying. "Wait, do I have the blood of the djinn in me?"
The djinn were the ancient mages who had set up the Relictombs across Alacrya, as well as the flying city of Xyrus and Dicathen's flying castle. In Dicathen, latent djinni heritage manifested as emitters, which were dedicated healers that could influence vivum aether with their mana, allowing for potent healing spells.
"Not of the djinn," Lady Dawn replied cooly.
My brain stuttered on that. If not the djinn, then what else? The words of the phoenix implied I was on the right track, but what else...?
"Oh," I said, finally putting two and two together. "I've manifested Vritra blood."
That was the conclusion I came to, but it quickly faltered as I considered reality. But that didn't make sense either. I didn't have any horns or notable basilisk features and was sure I didn't have an affinity for any of the Vritra's deviant forms of mana.
"Still only partially correct, Contractor," the phoenix replied. "Most mages on this continent have very, very trace amounts of slumbering Vritra heritage in their Blood. That is why your mages are born with your cores, after all."
"So, I had a Vritra parent somewhere, far up my bloodline?" I asked, trying to comprehend.
The phoenix nodded. "Your latent asuran heritage was not truly manifested. It is akin to a slumbering beast, one that sleeps for decades at a time. My intrusion upon your body caused the beast to stir. It flicked its tail. Opened one eye. And then it went back to sleep."
I frowned, not quite understanding. "So, it's a partial manifestation?"
The asura sighed. "If that is what allows your mind to comprehend it. Your healing is accelerated as a result. But the beast has awoken once, and its slumber is lighter than what it once was. There is no telling what may probe it from its rest once more."
"You speak as if this is a bad thing," I said, confused. "If I manifest Vritra blood, that's just more power to accomplish both of our goals. All the better, right?"
The phoenix looked at me with disappointment. "And call attention to yourself from mages within Taegrin Caelum, who may wish to experiment upon you to draw that blood out even further? You would be pulled into Agrona's crosshairs, under his sights. And you do not wish for that."
I deflated. Yeah, she raised a good point about that. It wasn't easy to hide Vritra blood manifesting, and it was a death sentence by law to assist someone in doing so.
"And even further..." Lady Dawn continued, turning back to her book. I was certain she wasn't actually reading the words on the page now. "The phoenix and the basilisk are fundamentally opposed. It is the nature of things, from the depths of our mana arts to the intricacies of our cultures. I do not know how a full manifestation of Vritra blood will react to my presence." The asura looked at me again. "This is new for me as well, Contractor. I do not know what will come of this."
I was left with those thoughts to ponder as the night wore on, only the flipping of pages to break the silence.