by Ren Ryder
Four primal elements whirled inside me, and I felt sick. “This is a bit late to ask, but exactly how dangerous is this?”
“Oh, it’s no biggie, 50/50 I’d say. But, ehhh, halved four times, well, I guess it isn’t the safest thing? But ooh, look, pretty colors!”
Fancy that. Somehow, the runes had taken on the colors associated with their element. Even Bell’s personal sigil had taken on a silvery sheen. Looking down was too much a task for me, apparently. My vision grayed and I wobbled drunkenly before toppling over backwards. Darkness intruded at the edges of my vision, then eclipsed it.
Chapter Fourteen
“Come on, that’s a good boy. This way, this way~”
I felt all out of sorts, like I was a stranger in my own body. My left side was hot, too hot, and my right was cold, too cold. I was shivering and sweating. I felt like I had the mother of all fevers. A ringing in my ears made sound garbled and, coupled with the haze across my vision, threw off my balance something fierce.
I struggled to get out the words I wanted to say. “What’s— what’s wrong with me?” My tongue felt too big for my mouth and my jaw was locking up.
“Come on, we’re almost there. One step after the other! Good, good, just like that~”
Every step was a struggle. My left leg felt light and airy, like it wasn’t even there. I would end up stumbling after throwing too much power behind steps off that foot, while it was a struggle to even move the other. My right foot was dead weight, effectively turning me into a gimp.
“If you really wanna know, you’re suffering from an acute case of aural imbalance.”
I felt like I was going to puke. “I don’t feel so good.”
I regained some level of self-awareness and was able to see something of my surroundings through the haze over my vision.
I found myself halfway through the Middle Quarter, being led by the hand by Bell. I was on a busy street, but people gave me a wide berth. It took my addled brain longer than it should have to realize I was the source of significant public distress. I was getting some weird looks, like I was diseased or something.
Ah, I see.
From their perspective, a groaning, white-haired, golden-eyed man was shuffling down the street with one hand held up like a macabre guidepost.
“Ah, gahhh, where are we going? Where are you taking me?”
“Running from your problems isn’t going to get you anywhere, Kal.”
The longer I ambled along at Bell’s insistence, the more clear our destination became. The press of the crowds and the sea of faces fell away, along with all my doubts about where we were headed. We’d entered the Upper Quarter.
Sprawling, multilevel estates were arrayed on either side of us. Ritzy fountains, parks, and other public works adorned the area like sparkling detritus.
I tugged against Bell’s grip, but she didn’t budge. “Wait, not yet— there are other places I want to look first!” As she was now, moving a mountain would have been an easier task than turning her aside.
“Nuh-uh. We’re done playing avoidance games, and I’m through humoring you. No matter how much you hope it will, running away from your problems won’t make them any smaller or easier to deal with, and this denial kick you’re on isn’t even that, it’s worse.”
One of the regular Watch patrols caught sight of us, and I breathed a relieved sigh.
“Ho there! What do we have here?” The man who hailed me was big, burly, and reeked of alcohol.
His partner was rail-thin and sickly-looking. “What business you got around these parts, sonny?” His smile was missing a few teeth, and it put me on edge.
Have the standards for The Watch fallen so low?
I was sweating buckets, but not because I was caught off guard by the question. “I’m—” I began, but the watchman was caught up in the story he was telling himself.
“You happen to be carrying any firearms on ya, kiddo?”
I had no idea what they were talking about. The term was unfamiliar, alien. “Fire-what?”
The watchman shifted his weight and rested one of his hands on an odd-shaped bulge strapped to his waist. “Think we’ll be needing to give this one a full body search— oi, boy-o, so ya know, if you have any weapons on ya, we’ll be havin’ to detain ya for unlawful possession.”
This series of events was no good. I didn’t have any weapons on me, but I wouldn’t put it past these watchmen to put me in lockup on false charges. I needed to gain the initiative and take control of the situation.
I was grasping at straws, but, “I’m in the employ of Duke Regulus Maddox himself, and he won’t be happy to hear you’ve detained one of his retainers while on one of his personal errands.” I stilled my fidgeting and wiped the sweat off my brow to make a more convincing picture.
“The Duke?” The watchmen shared a look, and some unspoken understanding passed between them.
I went all in. “Don’t believe me? Have his steward pass him my name. I guarantee the Duke himself will vouch for me.” I was stretching the truth about as far as it could go.
Either they believed me, or, more than likely, the watchmen didn’t want to trouble themselves over the off chance I was telling the truth. “As you were then.” The wall of flesh blocking my way forward parted, and I released a pent-up breath.
“Come on, Kal, let’s go~”
Bell towed me along by the shirtfront, and I was in no position to disagree with such a compelling argument. I was in no way my usual self. From what I could tell, sealing a handful of elementals inside yourself required something of an adjustment period.
All of a sudden we were in the Upper Quarter, right out in front of the Maddox estate.
“You’ve got to stop doing that, it’s embarrassing.”
That came out of left field. “What’re you talking about?”
Bell was grinning. “Passing out like some delicate flower, I mean.”
I narrowed my eyes at Bell and didn’t deign to grace her with a response. Whatever I came up with, she’d manage to turn it around on me anyway.
“Boo~” Bell stuck out her tongue at me. “You’re no fun.”
A voice that was unfamiliar in tone, and yet unmistakable all the same, reached my ears. “Kal?” My name had never been spoken in such a way, filled with so much disbelief, dread, and hurt.
Hearing it, my heart clenched. I wanted to turn around, to face the voice’s owner with my head held high, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t face her. My feet were rooted to the spot. All the muscles in my body went rigid. Every instinct in me yelled at me to run, to flee, but I couldn’t. I was a rabbit caught in the trap.
I swallowed as a slight figure, a head shorter than me but grown all the same, entered my line of sight. “I thought so. It is you, isn’t it. Kal.” A note of accusation, and anger, entered Sammie’s voice.
The woman before me had hair as red as flame, and emerald eyes that sparked in the Summer sun. Fresh freckles adorned her face, and her skin was a healthy shade of olive. She was beautiful, and a grown woman besides.
Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. “Sammie?”
Sammie crossed her arms under her breasts and sighed. “No one calls me that anymore, Kal. My name is Samantha.”
Bell chose that moment to stick her nose in. “Sniffle, sniffle— a-chew! They grow up so fast~”
“You take to keeping bugs, Kal?”
“Rude! Kal, I don’t like the bigger version of this human!”
While I’d been studying Sammie, she’d been doing the same to me, evidently. “You look the same as I remember. How is that even possible? For all that though, you look like a corpse left out in the sun a week.”
“I came to—” I began.
Sammie interjected, “— Fourteen years, two-hundred and fifty-eight days.”
“Huh?”
“That’s how long it’s been. That’s how long you left me alone. So, where have you been all this time? Come on, let’s have it.”
I was
at a loss for words. “Little sister…”
“Don’t call me that.”
“… what do you mean, ‘don’t call you that’?”
“I gave up all family ties when I joined the Ouroboros, but in return I gained its protection. You certainly weren’t there for me when I needed you most.”
Her words shocked me, and I reacted with utter disbelief. “You joined them? There’s no way— don’t you remember what they did to you? What they do to people?!”
Sammie stuck a finger in my face. “Dial back your tone, Kal. Don’t you know anything? Ouroboros has been on the up-and-up for a long time now. Everyone knows that, but then, you wouldn’t, would you, seeing as you haven’t been around.” There on her inner forearm was the disturbing black-and-red serpent eating its own tail.
I held my clasped hands out in front of me, beseeching, shook them up and down. “Hah— come on, Sammie, you can’t mean that. You and me, we’re family. We’re all we’ve got in this world. A bond like that can’t be left behind, easy as that.” For all my pleading, I had no right to rebuke her. “Look, Sammie, I came back for you.”
Sammie shook with rage. “Don’t, just— don’t.”
Her words— her refusal of everything we were to each other— dropped me into a swamp of confusion. “I don’t, I don’t understand. How’d things turn out like this, Sammie?”
“Let me say it in a way that’ll get through that thick skull of yours. I am not your sister, not anymore. We aren’t family, we don’t even know each other anymore!” Her chest heaved with the force of her words, and she paused to calm her breathing. “Like I said, we’re complete strangers, same as any you’d find bumping into each other on the streets of New London.” Sammie waved a hand at our surroundings to make her point.
“So you should leave, go far away, get out of this city while you’ve still got half a chance to make it out alive.”
I fell back onto my ass and sat there in street, staring up at Sammie.
“So, we aren’t going to play like we used to?” Bell asked.
“Shut up!” Sammie said.
“Bell, be quiet,” I said.
Sammie and I spoke in tandem, and a tense silence stretched after.
Sammie cleared her throat. “That’s a lovely scarf you’ve got there, Kal.”
“What? My… scarf? This?” I fingered the yellow-gold bandana Rex had given me, a memento of Thorn’s.
Sammie threw up her hands. “Didn’t you know? You’re a legend around these parts. New London’s Specter. They say you killed twenty-two Ouroboros members in cold blood before disappearing without a trace. A killer without remorse, a ghost without a soul, hunting the living so you might continue walking the earth. Scary stuff, your legacy! I don’t believe in fairy tales, but I heard from someone I trust that the kill count’s real.”
I felt nauseous. “What are you talking about? I didn’t…”
“You were a real thorn in Ouroboros’s side you know.”
It clicked for me then. Rex had been so helpful, and the old codger hadn’t charged me a dime for his troubles. “Damnit, Rex.”
And Thorn— damn him and his Yellow Scarves— left me a legacy of bodies.
“Shirking responsibility again, are you? Typical. Some older brother you turned out to be.”
“It wasn’t— I hurt some people, I had to send a message, Sammie, but I didn’t kill all the people they say I did.”
“The truth of more than a decade ago doesn’t matter, Kal— the story everyone remembers as true, that does. You shouldn’t have come back. When Ouroboros finds out you’re in New London— and they will find out, if they haven’t already, trust me— they’ll have you hunted down, tortured to death, and have your body hung up and left for the crows.
“They’ll have to, to make an example of you. And you’re not exactly nondescript-looking, it won’t take long for them to find you.”
As I deflated, feeling like I might sink beneath the earth right then and there, I happened to glance at the ink adorning Sammie’s forearm. The skin of her inner arm looked raw. The ink was fresh. “Been long since you joined Ouroboros?”
“Did you hear what I said? Have you been listening to me, like, at all?! You’ve got a day, tops, to get yourself out of this godsforsaken city. If you stay here, if you ever come back, you’re dead! Dead, you hear me?!”
Queen Titania’s words rung in my ears.
Had I not made it back in time after all?
“It hasn’t been long, has it?” I pushed, my words sounding desperate even to my ears.
For the first time since we started speaking, I saw Samantha’s facade crack ever so slightly. “Don’t you get it?! They’re going to kill you!”
I smiled sadly. “Thanks, Sammie. I know what I need to do now. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on, you can let your big brother handle the rest.”
“Don’t mess with me! Where were you all the times I needed a big brother?!” Sammie hit me on the chest with each point, and I just sat there, accepting her feelings.
“I was—” I stopped.
“What, cat got your tongue? Do you know how many years it’s been, Kal, how long you left me on my own?! Where have you been, huh? All this time, where have you been?!” Sammie laughed hysterically. “And where do you get off coming back into my life now, not a hair changed from how I remember you?! Well, what do you have to say for yourself, huh?! Come on, say something!”
I tried to clasp Samantha’s hands in mine, but she shook me off and stepped away to keep me at arm’s length. “Sammie, you have to believe me, I didn’t know this was going to happen— I never would have left your side if I did.”
“It doesn’t matter. Look at us Kal, really look at us. It’s too late. I can’t be your little sister anymore, it’s just not possible.”
Granted, Sammie was a grown woman now, and I was… well, I was the same as ever.
“Just… just go, Kal. Leave, get out of here. I don’t need you in my life. I’ll handle my problems myself, like I always have up ’til now.”
“I—”
Sammie cut me off. “Go. I mean it.”
And so I left her alone, again.
Chapter Fifteen
Bell jabbed me with the little horns sprouting from her head, jarring me out of my meditative state. “Kal, come on, you’ve been at this for three days. Days! Have mercyyyyy, I’m melting here! And, and, I’m soo bored!”
Scowling, I pulled Thorn’s yellow-gold bandana down from where it sat covering my hyper-sensitive eyes. My eyes were adjusting to the light, so I couldn’t see her face clearly yet, but I bet Bell was pouting.
She was sprawled out like a noodle on the roof beside me. To Bell’s credit, as my vision cleared I noticed her pale green skin had taken on a slightly darker hue.
Bell’s version of a tan?
I shooed the sylph away. “Go inside and read a book or something.”
Gone fifteen years from the city, and the Grand Library remained an unwavering backbone of New London. Ten stories tall and spanning a square block, it was easily one of the largest repositories of knowledge the world had ever known. For a copper, any curious citizen or tourist could make use of its facilities. I imagined that if you were a capricious sylph with too much time on your hands, the fee was waived.
“Don’t wanna! Reading’s boring!”
I laughed. “You act like you’re allergic.”
After kneading my numb legs back to life, I laid back and lounged on the rough ceramic tiles of the Grand Library’s uppermost roof. Despite the summer heat, I had my cloak wrapped tight around me and Thorn’s old yellow-gold bandana dangled from my neck. The remaining light cast by the setting sun stabbed at my corneas, and I winced.
Bell toyed with the birds nesting beneath the tiered roof beneath me, tossing pebbles with so-so accuracy. The birds didn’t take the abuse lying down. Along with angry squawks of protest, a good dozen of them dive-bombed Bell, squawking in angry protest.
“I don’t like this new Sammie. The younger version was waaaaaay cuter!”
I rubbed my eyes over closed eyelids, and allowed the frustration welling up inside me to leak away. “Bell, we’ve been over this. Samantha has her reasons. We can’t hold that against her.”
Bell alighted beside me, taking cover. “Hey, I know, do some magic to entertain me!”
I fended off the murder of crows that swooped in to get her. “Someone might—”
“I’ll keep a sharp lookout!”
“I don’t know if I…”
“I pronounce thee ready to rumble!”
“Fine, whatever, but when things go south— and they will— I’m blaming you.”
“That’s the spirit!”
I hadn’t simply been cooling my heels or wallowing in existential dread. While with fever, I’d spent the past few days meditating to bring my aura back into balance.
I hadn’t puked since this morning. Hurray. But while things were certainly looking up as far as my health went, I had no confidence the same held true for my budding talents as a spirit mage slash elementalist.
My mind tumbled through my options without pausing on any particular one.
Water, no, Fire. Earth, gotta be Earth. Or… how about Wind? Wind. Wind is good.
Sensing my indecision, Bell advised, “Start simple.”
“Like how? With what?”
“I’m thirsty, how about some water?”
I took a deep, stabilizing breath. “Some water… I can do that, probably.”
Bell raised both her hands in the air and swung them around. “Woo woo, you can do it~”
“Akua—” my voice cracked.
I channeled Water. Blue light lit up the sigil on my right hand. A small spout of water dripped off my fingertips and splashed on the ground ten stories below. Cool energy flowed into my body from my right arm, and, like soft waves lapping upon a beach, I settled into the feeling of working with elemental forces.