“Actually, there is a bit of truth in that first part,” Isaac said. “A Blessed draws her power from something, anything – air, blood, pain, animals – only the Blessed knows. What she uses as her source influences what she can do with her power, so it’s possible that at some point in time, there was a Blessed who used blood for her power.”
“Here you are, sir. Courtesy of the gentleman’s friends.” A barmaid placed a foaming mug in front of Alocar, and one of the men who’d helped the drunk raised his own in response to Alocar’s nod.
“When you say source, do you mean any type of blood, or any type of animal can be used?” Crymson put her elbows on the table.
“No, not necessarily. It’s like this: a human can eat just about anything, right? Even metal, provided it’s filed down properly. But a human can only get nutrients from certain types of things he eats, yes?” Nods of assent. “It’s the same thing with the Blessed. One that draws power from an animal needs something specific from that animal in order to use it as a source, and it’s going to vary depending on the Blessed: some might use the blood of the animal, while another might only be able to use the animal’s sense of well-being. Basically, the amount of things that can be used as a source are near innumerable.”
Alocar took a sip of the brew. “What’s your power? Obviously Angras knew of your talents, but the rest of us are still in the dark, and considering Fayne is less than two weeks out, it’d be in our best interest to let us know of your capabilities. Otherwise, we’re going in blind on one end.”
Isaac took a deep breath, held it, and then let it out. He’d weighed his answer a million times since his departure from Dradenhurst, but somehow, it never got easier. “It’s more complicated than this, but the term you’d be used to would be fire.”
“Fire?” Crymson asked.
Isaac put his back to the tavern and cupped his hands in front of him. He glanced to the stairs, and saw nobody coming down, so he snapped his fingers, upon which a blue flame sputtered and caught. He snapped his fingers again, and the flame went out. “My source is the biggest thing around us: the sun.”
“What can you do with it?” asked Alocar, wiping foam from his mustache.
“Similar things to what you saw in the forest. Beams of light, or fire, are the least of what I can do, but, when it comes to Blessed, the greater the strength, the greater the weakness. It’s kind of a balance thing.”
“The sun goes away at night,” Crymson said. “How much does that matter?”
“A lot,” Isaac ran his fingers along the wood, back and forth. “If I don’t have access to its rays, I’m fairly useless, although there is one thing that I can do to combat it.”
“Do tell.”
“Eh – imagine the canteen you pour water into. Now imagine the body as the canteen and magic as the water. There’s a threshold to how much magic the body can store, same as there is a limit to how much liquid you can put in a canteen. But filling a body with magic isn’t the same as dipping a canteen in a stream. Filling a body with magic is more like filling a canteen with a leaky bucket. If the Blessed in question has a weak source, such as a rare metal, it may well take years or decades for his body to fill up. A more common source, on the other hand, can refill faster, but both Blessed can hold only finite amounts.”
“And you don’t do that all the time because . . . ?”
“It scares me,” Isaac said.
Alocar slapped the table, his tactician’s mind coming to play. “Can you make it more spread out, like a flood instead of an arrow?”
“It’s possible, but I only have so much control over it.”
“So you’re equally as capable of fending off a small force of men as you are fending off a skilled opponent, which means you can handle more than one type of situation.” Alocar stroked his chin.
“If I have enough warning, yes.”
“Useful,” Alocar said. “Could’ve used you under my command a few years back. Saved me some trouble and some men.”
“Back to the canteen theory.” Crymson waited for another drunk to pass their table. “The records spoke of other things. Of men becoming something other than human. Creatures, almost. I thought it sounded like made-up fluff, more rumormongering, but there was validity to that?”
Isaac drew another deep breath, “There is some truth to that idea. Magic changes a person, its user. Blessed with immense power, especially ones that store it over time, drawing on powerful sources, are the ones in greatest danger; I don’t want to trod that road, so I only take what I need.”
“So what about those records?”
“Change,” Isaac said. “The type of power that a Blessed wields brings with it an . . . appreciation of new things, and sometimes physical changes, too. Just not enough to be considered less than human, I don’t think. For instance, my mentor used to tell me about this Blessed whose source was a grizzly bear’s rage, and by the time they finally brought him down, the Blessed was close to seven feet tall and bloodthirsty.”
“Wait, so you don’t have total control?” Crymson raised an eyebrow.
“I do, to an extent. Imagine my canteen at a quarter-full. That’s almost all me, at that point.”
“But what about half-full, or three-quarters?” she countered.
Isaac shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. I’m always going to have an element of control in it, but it’ll vary depending on the Blessed’s strength of will and his or her source. I’ve never had much of a need of filling it that much, to be honest. That fight back in the forest? That was me running low, maybe a tenth of my canteen.”
Groping in the dark for words to explain something to people who had never before experienced magic, Isaac said, “But that’s not how you should think of it. Magic is not – eh, it’s not good or evil. That’s the problem. People think that magic has sides to it, but really, it’s no more than a tool. A sword can take a lover’s head as easily as it can take an enemy’s; magic is no different. The Blessed is the one who determines his morality, side effects included. But, the more power, the more potential for change. And the more you use the power, the more it compounds that change.”
Alocar and Crymson exchanged a look, but Isaac barely noticed. Secrets weighed people down, and telling his biggest one had lightened him, even though these situations were the ones he’d learned to avoid, for good reason.
“And you, you’re one of the very few who can wield the magic of one of these people. Why aren’t you changed? Or are you changed, and we just don’t know it because we didn’t know you beforehand?” Alocar finished the last of his beer and pushed it to the center of the table.
Isaac hesitated. In the dark confines of Whispers, he’d mulled over this question more than once, but he’d never come to a satisfying conclusion. “My, umm, my time away from the outside world cut me off to the source of power I’d always used. I can’t be sure – I wish I was – but being away from my source seems to have reversed the change, or at least stalled it.”
He pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek. “Now that I’m back in the real world, it’s certain to affect me, but like I said, it isn’t a change for the better or the worse unless I let it become one of those things.”
“I mean, there have even been stories of men and women who became almost saintly, because their source of magic was happiness, or laughter . . . ” he trailed off. Nobody said anything. Isaac’s hands returned to his pants and tongues of flame danced beneath the table.
“These changes,” Crymson said, “now that you’re back to using your abilities, are they going to begin anew?”
Isaac almost stuttered forcing the word from his lips. “Yes.”
“And these changes, you said that they are neither good nor bad, just effects of the type of power wielded, but that doesn’t mean some aren’t more dangerous to us than others, correct?” She rose an inch from her chair.
He felt his stomach flip – sharp mind. “Yes.”
“Well then, tha
t just leaves me with this.” Crymson kicked the chair out from underneath Isaac and he landed on his back, the stairs scant inches from his head. He felt the bar staring at him, but before he could react, Crymson’s knee drove him into the ground, and she lodged a forearm in his throat. He froze, his arms outspread.
“One question.” Her eyes bore through his head with the forcefulness of a boxer’s snap. “When these ‘changes’ come over you, how much of a danger will you be to those around you – us?”
Isaac forced his eyes to hold hers and hoped nobody could see through his shoddy mask of bravery. “As long as you aren’t the enemy, practically none.”
Their eyes stayed locked for a long moment before Crymson stood and offered her hand. Isaac looked at it for a second and then let her pull him up.
The bar kicked back into motion – just another drunken brawl. “Good night,” Isaac said. “I’ll leave the door cracked.”
It wasn’t until he was up the stairs that his pulse slowed. They may not be in danger now, but wait until he’d been in the world longer. Wait until everybody turns on him. Just like last time.
The door silenced his pessimism. His head had no room left for thoughts, and by the look of it, Crymson’s prediction had come true. Looked like a night on the floor.
“What do you think?” Crymson twirled the dinner fork in her fingers.
Alocar began gathering the plates, stacking them in the middle of the table. “I don’t think we can afford to use him as anything other than what he is. He’s a weapon.”
A nod from Crymson. “An unwilling weapon.”
“An unwilling weapon,” Alocar pointed toward Crymson’s fork, “can still be used. It just needs to be pointed in the right direction.”
“Or coaxed there.” She handed him the fork.
“Whichever, so long as it doesn’t blow up in our faces.”
A waitress walked over. “Finished for the night?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Alocar, one foot on the stairs, Crymson already disappearing.
“You’re Alocar?”
He nodded.
The waitress held out her hand. “Mr. Slate said you’d be paying.”
Angras
Twelve years ago.
A door shut.
Hide!
I squinched deeper into the corner, burying my face in my sleeves. The rustle of sheets. Of falling clothes.
Don’t look.
I peeked through the gap in my arms.
“You’re alone?”
A freckled shoulder. “You think to question me? Get on the damn bed.”
The creak of wood. A moan. And then another, rising. I covered my ears, but it left my eyes exposed.
“Oh. Oh yes!”
A pause. Light voice. “Are you serious?”
Quickly – “I’ll be ready again in a few minutes.”
Something toppled. I couldn’t move any farther into the corner. Bare feet slapped the floor, toes dipped in blood. Dainty.
A sigh. A knock.
The door opened. “Ready?”
“Clean up this mess. And for God’s sake, find somebody better next time around. The last few have been nothing but disappointments.”
A bow. I buried my head in my arms and tried to become one with the darkness. Shook with sobs.
Don’t worry. You still have me.
Crymson
Chill air bit her back through the unevenly nailed boards. Her head rested on a stack of rumpled clothes. She dearly wished to throw something, preferably heavy, at Slate. He lay sprawled on the room’s only bed, space leftover for nothing larger than a sleeping cat. Teacher and Isaac slept the near the door, Isaac’s head propped against the wall and a thin line of drool running down Teacher’s cheek.
The slats outside the room squeaked. Light laughter drifted underneath the door, followed by the shuffle of feet and a woman’s hushed voice. “Glad I found you tonight, handsome.” Crymson rolled onto her side, turning her head to face the wall. A door shut and the voices disappeared.
It felt much like her childhood, before Beatty had taken her in and given her a home. The thought made her smile. She missed him and his insufferable pipe smoke. When this was over, she planned on visiting him; hopefully there’d be more soup on the table, and maybe Harry would have learned to “talk funny.”
Something thumped. Crymson jolted and her head collided with the table she’d lain under. Rubbing the growing lump and cursing quietly, she looked around the room – nobody had moved, though Alocar had never shown up. She estimated it to be two, maybe three hours until dawn.
She squirmed from under her blanket. The crack in the door revealed nothing. Crymson put her ear to it. Held her breath. A stifled cough. There! Somebody stood outside the door, but whom? And for what? She remembered Alocar’s warning.
Why does Alocar have to be gone? Why can’t it be this one? “Pssst.” She shook Slate’s arm. “Hey. Wake up. Something’s wrong.”
“Whaaa?” He rubbed his eyes and squinted out the window. “The moon is still out, woman!”
“Shut up, just shuttup. Look, we’ve got a problem. It’s beyond late and Alocar isn’t back yet, plus,” Crymson lowered her voice even further, and Slate leaned close enough to bite her ear, “we have watchers. I need you to create a distraction while I go downstairs and find what out the problem is.”
Slate scowled. “We can look for the Old Man in the morning. He probably broke a hip on the stairs. Besides, I seem to remember you saying ‘Go be paranoid somewhere else’ last time I tried helping you, so piss off.” A middle finger, and then Slate started snoring, so loud that even the couple next door stopped their frolicking to take notice.
That counted out Teacher, too. Crymson looked at Isaac, but dismissed the idea; she doubted that he had any desire to help her after their last words. She considered her options: they’d rented a second-story room, its window open to the street. Instincts could be wrong, but something about Alocar’s disappearance and the watching of their room just didn’t sit well with her.
If anybody had looked outside at that moment, they’d have seen a lithe figure spread-eagled across the roof. If they’d looked closer, they would have seen that figure drop and roll into the night, only to spring up and scale the stairs back into the building.
She opened the door, her feet the only sound – thank God for small favors. A drunk had passed out in the back corner, his head on the table, a mug dangling from his hand. She made her way to the stairs, the floor a sticky mess. The bottom stair creaked as she placed her weight on it, and Crymson skipped to the next to redistribute her weight.
Balancing on the balls of her feet, Crymson debated her next move: she would need to cross at least ten feet past the top stair to get to their room, maybe more, so she couldn’t risk a frontal attack, but neither could she hope to sneak up on their watcher, not in such narrow quarters.
She hopped back onto the bar floor, her bare feet flexed to absorb the impact. One eye on the drunk, Crymson grabbed a bottle from behind the bar and corkscrewed off the top. A leftover coat, several times her size, lay draped over one of the bar’s chairs – the idiocy of the male mind. She sniffed the bottle and nodded, moving it to arm’s length.
Crymson upended the bottle’s contents over the coat, dowsing everything from sleeves to collar, and then donned it, ragged cuffs hanging inches past her fingertips. Bottle in hand, Crymson staggered toward the stairs. The drunk woke up and looked at her, but she put a finger to her lips. He nodded blearily, smiling, and then put his forehead back against the table. Now she had only to pray that the watcher of the room loathed drunks to the same degree as most sober people.
Nine stairs. She took them one at a time, footfalls slapping in the quiet night. Her elbow hit the wall and she leaned into it – thump. Her feet fell in a non-rhythmic pattern, a pause on one stair, down one, and then up two stairs, followed by another pause. Crymson’s left hand still held the bottle of liquor, which clinked against the wall with
every step.
At the top of the stairs, she swayed and put her hand against the wall to steady herself. Shoulders hunched and hand extended for guidance, she walked down the hallway, peering out from beneath her coat, dragging her feet.
Directly opposite their room, a figure reclined against the wall. Moonbeams from the hallway’s window glinted off a belted dagger. His head turned toward Crymson, its rapid motion at odds with her less-than-graceful walk down the hall.
Crymson tilted the bottle and let the liquor spill down her chin and onto her chest, the sodden coat heavy on her shoulders. The watcher thrust his chin at her, showcasing pockmarked skin and a loose beard, a missing patch giving his face an unfinished look, like a sculptor who had put sworn off his tools mid-project.
Eight feet. Five feet. Crymson’s left hand tightened on the bottle, the coat’s long sleeves giving extra cover. The man squinted and then drew back, a moonlit knife appearing in his hand. Crymson cursed. His arm came forward and her adrenaline kicked into high gear, slowing time.
The knife flew, spinning end over end, hilt over blade, in perfect harmonization to enter her chest, right below her heart. She threw herself onto the floor, and it passed overhead, clattering down the stairs. Crymson wasted no time. Already, the man had drawn back his arm, a second knife in hand.
Her only weapon the quarter-full bottle, she flung it underhanded at her attacker, aiming from her knees. It arced and shattered against the side wall – a miss. But the spirits from the bottle flew into the air, spraying the man’s eyes at the same moment that he released the knife, which buried itself to the hilt in the stairwell’s ceiling.
Crymson sprinted at the man, one of his hands wiping alcohol from red eyes, the other held before him, as if to ward her away. Unfortunate.
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