by Rowan Rook
First, he focused on trying to move his limbs. A menagerie of aches and pains announced themselves as the shock dulled, but nothing seemed broken. He exhaled a shaky breath. Miraculously enough, he was more or less fine. His panic ebbed, slowing his pulse, as the reality of his luck set in. Now, where was...
"Shakaya!" His breath was sucked right back out of him when he noticed the arms wrapped around his chest. Shakaya lay beneath him, holding him tight. She'd grabbed him during the slide. She'd shielded him from the impact. She'd saved him. "Shakaya?"
No answer. Her eyes were closed, her back pressed into the wall, her clammy fingers still clutching his shirt. Careful, he lifted himself off of her ribs.
Shakaya's chest rose and fell with a gasp.
Amaranth leaned close. He couldn't find any visible injuries aside from cuts and dark blue bruises, but her tension signaled pain. He put a gentle hand on her cheek, unsure whether or not she was conscious. "Shakaya?"
She roused, her eyes cracking open just enough to see him. "Good. You're all right."
He swallowed to loosen his throat. "But you—"
"I'm fine." She tried to sit up, but only made it halfway. Sweat beaded on her brow and spoiled her efforts to hide the pain.
Amaranth flinched with guilt. "Shakaya!"
She shook her head on a stiff neck. "It's just...my back..."
Amaranth bit his lip and gently lifted up her coat. The armor that should've protected her was dented and cracked, and swollen flesh pressed against its leather under layer. She winced when he ran his fingers across the wound. It could have been worse, but it was impossible to tell the extent of her injuries in their current state. He mentally reviewed everything he'd brought from the Academy. He'd packed some generic lab supplies, including bandages and anti-inflammatory pills. He grasped around blindly in search of his bag, but found nothing—it must have slid away from his seat during the crash. Shit.
His eyes lingered on his injured companion while his mind ran away with him. They needed to get out of the ruined car, and they needed to find out what the rest of the soldiers planned on doing next. Hell, they needed to find out who and how many were still alive. It would be best, though, if Shakaya stayed still until her back had support. They couldn't risk worsening the wound.
"Hold on." Not that she'd be going anywhere. "I need to find my supplies."
Standing up on shaky legs, Amaranth finally searched the car itself. It had quieted now, screams diminished to moans and the occasional curse and sob. The night cast strange shadows across the rubble, but he could see the shapes of soldiers heaving themselves up. Some hovered over the still silhouettes of others.
His bag, though...his bag was nowhere to be found among the wreckage. He grumbled a curse of his own and looked through the broken windows. Sure enough, he saw it. Lying on the hillside, buried in bits of debris, was his bag.
Sweat left trails on his skin as he climbed toward the nearest window frame, his limbs suddenly feeling entirely too long and thin. The red dress shirt and elegant, tight-fitting black pants he was wearing made it hard to maneuver. He grimaced. Had he known the train was going to crash, he'd have dressed for the occasion.
The window hung at a nearly vertical angle—it took all the strength he had to haul himself through it with trembling arms. He avoided the broken edges as best he could, but still left a scrap of his shirt behind when he slid to the grass with a thud.
Suddenly exposed to the open air, his gaze scanned the rubble and wandered to the front of the ruined car. He gulped down nerves. What the Hell had happened, anyway?
As he inched closer, he saw it. The hinge that had once connected the car to the rest of the train was reduced to a jagged metal stump. It hadn't come disconnected and its lock hadn't been severed. No, the whole thing had been splintered.
His eyes widened. What could possibly have the power to...?
A rustle came from somewhere in the nearby debris. It was a dull sound, tapping twice against the soil like a pair of footsteps.
Amaranth reached for and held out the gun at his belt, not the Not. The average person wouldn't interpret the cuff as a threat like they would the firearm. His finger on the trigger—for all the good it would do—he scanned the rubble and listened for any footsteps over the pounding in his ears.
He didn't find anything. Perhaps he'd simply heard debris settling.
Still...
Suddenly anxious, he abandoned the shattered hinge and ran for his bag. After a brief search to make sure the contents he needed were still inside, he spun around to return to the car.
He just about screamed.
Someone was standing behind him.
He recoiled backward with huge eyes, dropping his bag. His shaky legs couldn't recover. They gave out beneath him and sent his ass to the soil.
The woman—a cloak obscured the stranger's shape, but her voice suggested she was female—chuckled in amusement. The red, winged mask concealing her face caught the moonlight with each motion, each laugh.
Amaranth fumbled for his gun, fingers so stiff they could hardly move. He raised it, but she simply stepped closer.
"It's a pleasure to see you too, Anson."
A cold tremor washed over his body, raising the hairs on his arms with sharp-nailed fingers. No one had called him by that name in years. Until he'd read that note, he'd thought no one ever would again.
His arms collapsed to his sides, his gun hitting the grass with a metallic thud.
It was as he'd thought. The note had been addressed to him.
"I-it, it was you!" he stuttered, hating the horror in his own voice. "You left that letter!"
The woman smirked, her lips aligning with the curved edges of her mask. "Always were a smart one, Anny."
Amaranth lifted the gun with shivering fingers.
He should shoot her. Whoever she was, he should shoot her. She knew his real name. She knew who he was. It was something that shouldn't be possible. No one should be able to know. There was no way anyone could know. He couldn't just let someone like that be. He needed to shoot her.
"Come on, Anny. You're just fine with watching Lyrum get sliced up in your so-called laboratories, but we both know you aren't capable of pulling a trigger on someone. That's the kind of hypocrite you are. It's sickening, really."
A shudder—and something else he couldn't identify, something heavy—pressed down on his lungs. "Who are you?" He fought for his voice, "Tell me who you are!"
"Me? But we aren't here to talk about me. We're here to talk about you."
"You did this, didn't you?" He gestured at the car, the shattered hinge. "Why? I was coming to find you! You didn't have to—"
"I didn't tell you to bring an entire entourage and your own personal bodyguard. I knew you'd come out of the crash just fine so long as she was there. Don't get the wrong idea, though—this wasn't all about you. Not hardly. If the Academy stumbled upon Riksharre, it would be...inconvenient, in the long run. This was one solution to two problems."
"It was cruel." He gritted his teeth. "I don't think everyone—"
"You have the gall to call me cruel?" her voice curdled.
He tensed, struggling to hear anything at all over the pounding in his skull. "Please, just... Just tell me what you want from me."
"I don't want anything from you. I want to help you. Didn't you read the letter?" She knelt beside him, holding out a hand to help him to his feet.
He could see, now, that she adorned a uniform similar to Sylan Rita's. She was a Butterfly, and judging from the damage done to the hinge, she was surely a Lyrum. Only Translation could have destroyed it like that. Her mask kept the rest of her identity hidden. All she exposed to him was a scornful smile, dark green eyes, and black hair tied up in a braided knot.
He didn't take her hand, meeting her cold gaze with one of his own.
She straightened. "A world that doesn't decide who you are based on your body. A world with no need for war. A paragon." Her voice grinned for her,
"You truly are mad, you know that?"
Amaranth jolted up. She knew his real name. She knew about Shakaya. She knew about the fantasies he kept to himself. Who the Hell was this Lyrum? "You—"
"It's mad," the Butterfly narrowed her eyes, "but not as far out of reach as you might think."
He didn't say anything.
"You could research your whole life and never live to make any real difference. You'd be fighting against nature itself—what the Author designed. Neither Human nor Lyrum have that type of power." The smile returned to her lips. "Yet there may still be a way. You just need a little more imagination."
He didn't say anything.
Sighing, as if slightly disappointed, she continued, "Most of Riksharre's records are in the Butterfly's possession now, and according to the texts, the Author sacrificed its own strength during Auratessa's creation. The Author wrote this world, yet it's remained silent for ages. Do you ever wonder why that is?"
He didn't say anything.
Frowning, the Lyrum paced lightly among the rubble. "The Author may have been divine, but its power was, in fact, not absolute. It used nearly every bit of it to give birth to Auratessa, and afterward, it no longer had enough to even hold its body together. Before its form fell apart and left it powerless, it spread what little remained of its strength—of itself—among the people who would become their species's leaders. That is, the Lyrum Council and the Human royal family, or at the time, the Humans who first started whispering of rebellion. These 'Inkwells'—what's left of the Author—still exist in our so-called leaders to this day."
Amaranth scoffed, "Impossible. The Author was defined by its ability to write and manipulate Word. If such a power truly existed within these people, then surely the Human monarchs would at least be able to use Translation. No such ability has ever been observed."
"Spoken like a true scientist," she tutted. "You still need more imagination."
He didn't say anything.
"One Inkwell is nothing. A holder wouldn't even notice. But four or five? Now that's a different story. You see, these Inkwells travel from person to person. While they are now independent from the Author and have no consciousness of their own, they were programmed, if you will, to always find the two species' current leaders. If a host dies of natural causes, their Inkwell moves to their oldest offspring or closest relative—the person most likely to take their place. If, however, a host was murdered...what do you think would happen then?"
He didn't say anything.
"The Inkwell would move instead to the culprit. Why? If a leader is killed, it's usually during a rebellion, and who would most likely lead then?" The Butterfly laughed, "The person who overthrew the ruler, of course!"
...The Author had allowed its power to pass down through murder? Amaranth shivered. Maybe the thing that had once created Auratessa was as mad as he was.
"The Author happened to create five Inkwells. Between the three members of the Council and the Human king and queen, they're spread out perfectly. Perhaps the Author foresaw the future of its abandoned children, after all." A hungry glint lit up her eyes. "Theoretically, if someone took out each leader from both species, they could claim all of this dormant power for themselves. Do you have any idea what someone who collected these Inkwells would be capable of?"
"Nothing that I'm interested in," Amaranth finally answered. "I work with science, not folktales."
"Oh, this isn't a folktale, Anny. It's something much grander than that," she sneered. "If someone used the combined force of these Inkwells, they could reshape our world to their every whim—what remains of the Author's strength, the ink that gave Auratessa its very form, would be theirs. The host would become a god in their own right. They could manipulate Word in ways that turn Translation into a joke. The host could never be as powerful as the Author once was before Auratessa's birth, but their abilities would put even your wildest dreams to shame." She leaned in so close that her nose nearly touched his. "You could rewrite the details of Auratessa itself. You could make your vision reality. And you could do it all within less than a month."
Amaranth snatched up his bag and turned toward the train car with an incredulous scowl.
"You could even rewrite the dead back into the world."
He stopped, the hair rising on the nape of his neck.
A girl sat at the edge of the fountain, a spring rose in her black hair. Her lips lifted into a grin as bright as her blue eyes.
"Just leave me be," his voice was only a whimper.
The Lyrum stubbornly padded after him. "Just think on it. After all, you're running out of time. Do you want to live and die like a nobody? Like it was all for nothing? Like none of it ever meant anything?" She spoke as if she were simply offering advice to an old friend, "I happen to know that one member of the Lyrum Council has been spending his time in the nearby Hazza mines, if you change your mind."
He glanced over his shoulder. "Why are you telling me this? Why me? What would be in it for you?"
"What does it matter what we get out of it?" She grinned, showing her teeth. "You're the one who owes it to them."
He shuddered, staring, held in place by her dark forest eyes.
The familiar whir of Shakaya's chakram split the silence and forced the Lyrum backward.
"Shakaya!" Amaranth whirled in the opposite direction.
Shakaya stood just feet away. She cradled her stomach, sweat dripping down her cheeks. "Get away from him," she ordered, clearly in no mood for an argument.
The Lyrum shot Amaranth a final glower—"Consider it, will you?"—before retreating down the hill and vanishing into the woods beyond the wreckage.
For a while, he stared after her, his eyes chasing the shadows that had swallowed the stranger. His veins pulsed with ice dredged up from the deepest parts of him.
Shakaya staggered forward, her balance wavering.
Amaranth yanked his gaze away from the darkness and reached out to give her support. "What do you think you're doing? You should still be lying down!" He fumbled through his bag with his spare hand. His mind swam in strange black oil, but for now, the Lyrum's words would have to wait. "Sit down, I should have something to take down the—"
"No." She shook her head. "Everyone who can is leaving for Hazza. It's nearby, and we should be able to contact the Academy from there. We need to stay with the rest of the troop."
He bit his lip. "Will you be all right?"
She nodded. "In my line of work, this is nothing. I've been through far worse."
He didn't argue, eager to get as far away from the woods as possible.
Chapter Seven: Into Darkness
Rickard's heels tapped down the corridor to the beat of her quickened heart. Even still, they were light, barely there, like the pattering of rain on the Academy's roof. She barely felt there, herself. She raced toward the adjunct office on the opposite side of the campus from her own, her lab coat trailing behind her. "Verox!" Her thin wrists pounded harder and louder than they should've been able to on the locked door. "Verox!"
No one answered.
She hit the door harder still. "Come out, you imbecile, or I'll make you!"
The door creaked open, so quickly that the Head General must have been standing there all along. "Is that a threat, Ms. Ransmae?"
Rickard bristled. "Don't you call my by my first name! Don't forget that we are equals."
As if, she didn't let her smirk reach her face.
The twitch of Verox's lips suggested he had the same thought—how naive. "My apologies, Professor Rickard. However, I would appreciate it if you didn't come to my door to call me names."
This time, she let her anger show on her face, baring her perfect white teeth beneath her smile. She hoped it scared him. "And I would appreciate it if you would inform me when my daughter is in a train crash."
Verox blinked, as if he genuinely hadn't realized what he'd done wrong, then let out a sigh. "Why should I have told you anything when my soldiers' work is none of your c
oncern?" He growled, "You work in the safety of your private lab. My soldiers risk their lives everyday. What happened isn't even especially unusual. We live in two separate worlds. I don't have the time to try to explain so many things you wouldn't understand every time a tragedy occurs." His lips twitched with another almost-smile. "Besides, I don't see how you have time to worry so much about us while your labs are still in pieces."
Flames fumed in Rickard's gullet, but she swallowed down the smoke. They're in pieces thanks to you and your soldiers, you insufferable gas bag. Well, perhaps the soldiers weren't entirely to blame for the attack on the labs, nor the attack on the train, but their incompetence certainly bore responsibility for the destruction—the destruction they'd failed to stop.
"What happens to my daughter is always my business!"
Verox wiped at his brow with his sleeve, as if the big bold general was working up a sweat just talking to her. "Ms. Johanne is not legally your daughter. We had no obligation to inform you. I'm sorry, but my priorities don't include dealing with your tantrums."
Tantrums? Rickard's heart squeezed tighter. ...Was he implying she had a reason to throw one? Or was this just Verox's usual condescension? "The legality doesn't matter. You know she's mine. Even you should have had the decency to tell me—"
Verox opened his mouth to speak.
Rickard held up a hand, still coated in a tight sterile glove. She'd been hard at work when she'd overheard a couple of her students talking about the troop's accident. What a terrible way to find out. "And don't you forget that one of my scientists—"
"Should not be on the mission!" Verox's voice came out louder than he'd perhaps expected, echoing through the hallway. "If one of your favorite lab rats gets himself killed, it is no concern of mine nor any of my soldiers. If anything, you're the one interfering with your daughters' focus—her wellbeing—by making such an irresponsible allowance. I should have said no when you asked me to let him come. I would have had I known you'd try to use it against me like this."