47 - Skysworn Tryouts

We went to the hospital to fetch Lindon, squeezing past the crowd once more, which only seemed to have thickened since we were last here.

This time, he wasn’t in his hospital room, but what looked to be a training room. It had handle bars on the side of the room, and long mirrors as well as small weights on a rack elsewhere. Probably a physical therapy room. Near to Lindon, leaned up against the wall, was the Death Scythe, which now had a leather strap on it in the middle, likely for ease of carrying. And it was sheathed in a film of gray madra. A sheathing construct, perhaps? Interesting nonetheless.

Lindon was by the weights, curling an hourglass shaped rock, with his new right forearm. 

And it looked… spooky.

It was stark white like undriven snow, and had this crystalline, edgy texture. The forearm seemed to consist of a pair of overgrown radius and ulna that blended together to create the illusion of an arm thick with muscle. His fingers were bone-like, clearly segmented, and each tip was sharp instead of blunt. It looked like the arm of a buff skeleton.

“Skeleton arm!” Yerin called, “Scarier than a tiger’s teeth! I love it. With your black eyes, that will have them messing themselves before you even throw a punch.”

Orthos stomped on over and gave the limb a look. “Yes… this will do. This is a powerful Remnant.”

“How is it treating you?” I asked as I walked closer, inspecting the Remnant limb. It was… remarkably solid. It looked almost physical. I inspected the band of scripts around the point where the Remnant limb joined his flesh, trying to make out its purpose.

It seemed to… suppress in some way. Ah. It was suppressing the Remnant’s will. The more I looked at it, the more I understood its mechanism.

“It’s like it has a mind of its own,” Lindon said with a frown, looking at the arm.

Then it darted towards me. I took a quick step back from him. Lindon’s eyes widened in shock. I just laughed. Orthos, too, far more amused than I had ever seen him before. “Wow.”

“It does that,” he said.

“Willpower training,” I said with a shrug. “Show the limb who is boss.”

“Exactly!” Orthos said, “The Dragon Conquers. Conquer it like you did the Blackflame Trials.”

Lindon gave a grateful nod to Orthos. “Gratitude. I’m unable to activate the binding at Gold,” Lindon said with a frown. “Gesha was… extremely irritated by Eithan at that, but he only said that this would pay its dividends in time.”

My eyes widened. He had put the Archstone inside the limb? That explained the… difference in appearance. “At Underlord, it will smooth out,” I said, “And look almost like a real arm, except stark white.”

Lindon sighed at that, a small grin on his face. “That is a relief to hear.”

“Because Underlord is just that easy,” Yerin said with a grin on her face.

“Pardon, I didn’t mean to—”

“Simmer down, Lindon,” Yerin said with an encouraging grin, “We’ll get to Underlord eventually.”

Then I felt a flare of excitement. “Treasure island,” I said to them. “The One Piece.”

Yerin scoffed. But she didn’t say anything. I tried not to fixate on that. Lindon gave me a hungry grin. “Is it soon?”

“Sooner than you think,” I said to him. “But for now, we’re being called back to see mummy pig and daddy pig. Apparently, they want us to run their stupid recruitment gauntlet with the rest of the emergency recruits.”

Lindon frowned. “Pardon, but weren’t we already admitted?”

“We were in training,” I conceded, “This also happened in the first run-through of things. Don’t worry, it’s easy,” I’d warn him not to ride on Orthos’ back, but him and his stupid healing factor could handle it, “We also get to meet a friend! She might seem extremely suspicious to you at first, but that’s only because she really is that nice, so be nice to her in turn, okay?”

Lindon frowned, but nodded. Yerin didn’t react, just staring at a wall. 

“Do you think, maybe,” Lindon began, “You should not be the one to speak with her? If she truly becomes a friend to us, then perhaps you would… be a little too forward, and scare her off?”

“I am capable of subtlety,” I said, “And with her, I will be. That means, no talking about my special knowledge. None of you should reference that, either. We never know who might be listening in when it comes to her, after all. You may be the first to approach her of course, but you’re not exactly the sociable type. In any case, I already met her before. I hope I made a good first impression,” Well, balancing the chest of Overlord scales on her head probably wasn’t the smoothest thing I ever did in my life, “But I’m sure things will turn out fine. Anyway, let’s go! Also,” I reached into my pockets and fished out two dream tablets. I gave one to Lindon, and Yerin didn’t look at mine, or me, until I poked her lightly on the shoulder.

She saw it, took it, and read it.

Then she frowned intensely, and gave the dream tablet back. She snorted. “They’ll do that to me over my rotting corpse.” I gave the dream tablet to Orthos. He took it in his mouth to read it.

“Thankfully, they won’t have a reason to,” I said, “We’ve taken extra precautions. Eithan will be there. But…” I looked at Lindon’s arm, and felt another pang of guilt. “Fate is annoying.” This shouldn’t even be Fate, even. This was just complete randomness and happenstance, and yet it continuously seemed to happen.

Monarch Butterflies.

Each and every perk and drawback of mine was explainable via some aspect of my upbringing.

Except for that one.

Perhaps… that was simply an immutable law of causality of some sorts? ‘Canon’ events are more likely to occur than not?

“Still,” I said. “Invest in earplugs.”

000

The obstacle course staging grounds were absolutely teeming with people of the ‘much bullshit’ variety. I liked to use that phrase to reference the scions of the great clans and schools.

Everywhere I looked, people either had metallic hair, green wings, gray skin, silver braces, clouds above their heads, knuckles coated in metal, and about a dozen more Paths that I could recognize. All the ‘cool’ Paths.

Needless to say, the Blackflame Empire lacked sorely in variety when it came to its warrior class. What else did I expect, though? They didn’t allow their warriors to be scholars, or their scholars to be warriors. Their ranking culture has melted their brains, fooled them into thinking that a pinprick level of focus in their field will somehow make up for all their other deficiencies. The sacred artist attitude.

They lacked the hunger of a true sacred artist.

The courage to expand their focus.

Yerin could do with a little bit more focus expansion as well, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. We desperately needed to talk, and there weren’t enough hours in the day to do so. At least we worked well together whenever Bai Rou and Renfei dragged us into another emergency situation. We should have our Skysworn apprentice pins by now, but I was decently certain that we had done all this work for free, as a part of our probationary status.

Lindon, Orthos and I had split from Yerin, who was going to do a course meant for Highgolds. Little Blue sat in Lindon’s pocket, peering out from it to look at all these people. Lindon wore the Death Scythe on his back, a leather strap placed diagonally over his torso, giving him an incredibly menacing appearance. Coupled with the Remnant arm and his blackflame eyes, he really would look fuck-off-terrifying to anyone dumb enough to try something.

With Star’s End in hand, I walked around, trying to find a girl with tar-covered hands and a draconic sceptre. I ended up splitting off from Lindon for a bit as I did, keeping a spiritual eye on the smoldering black sun that was Orthos so I knew where to find them.

Unfortunately, looking for shadow madra was about as hard as looking for pure madra.

Thankfully, the people readily made way for me as I walked around, trying my best to find Akura Mercy.

Eventually, I just gave up and returned to Lindon, hoping that Kotai Taien hadn’t—

Kotan Taien had, in fact.

“Prepare yourself, villain!”

I sighed. I should let Lindon handle this on his own, but that wouldn’t address my own grievance with the situation. So with a flash of my Starfire Surge technique, I just walked up to Kotai Taien’s laggard form and rested my spear beside his neck.

“In any other circumstance, I’d let my friend Lindon handle this on his own,” Kotai Taien froze as he turned around slowly to look at me. Then he looked up at my hair, then back into my eyes, and gaped. “But he was recently hurt, you see, after fighting a battle for his life against an opponent you couldn’t even touch after training for ten years, weak as you are. And he won, so heaven knows he could kill you in an instant.”

“Dark Star,” he breathed. I gave him an appreciative grin.

“So you know my name,” I pulled my spear back, letting it rest on my shoulder, and raised my voice. “The Blackflame is with me.”

Kotai Taien bowed to me at his waist and scampered off. 

The others in the crowd immediately turned away, knowing there was nothing more to see here.

Orthos growled and chuffed. “You should have let the boy handle this. A dragon does not need help!”

“Gratitude,” Lindon bowed his head.

I raised an eyebrow at him. “You didn’t really think I’d let you steal my thunder any more than you already have, right? Do you realize you now outrank me?”

“As he should,” Orthos maintained. I gave him a disappointed look. He really wasn’t ever going to let this ‘weakling’ thing go, was he?

Lindon frowned. “Ah, that explains things. Will I have to deal with this forever?”

“Welcome to the Blackflame Empire,” I said with a wide grin. “I do so hope that you enjoy your stay. We have murderous young masters and demented old monsters at the ready!”

Lindon chuckled tonelessly.

He was just as over it as I was. Hearing Eithan’s retelling of things made me come to a new appreciation for my hatred of authoritarian bastards like Gwei and Daishou.

“Glassy Sky!”

I heard that spoken by two people somehow. I turned around to see a stormcloud hanging over somebody pressing through the crowd in my direction, but I already knew who she was. Chon Sasha.

The other person who had called my name, however, had just pressed out of the crowd. She spotted me and gave me an eager wave of her tarry hand.

Just as Chon Sasha arrived, I turned to Mercy in a panic and gave her a wave and a nervous smile. “Akura Mercy!” I put an emphasis on Akura. Immediately, the crowd grew wary. Chon Sasha stopped in her tracks to look at Mercy with wide-eyes. She turned back and disappeared into the crowd.

Oh fuck. Oh shit. What a relief. 

“Hello,” I said to the Monarch heiress, “You’re… joining the Skysworn?”

Mercy nodded. “The Empire needs all the help it can get.”

“Isn’t that the truth?” I said. I turned to gesture at Lindon and Orthos, who had now retracted into his shell, utterly terrified. “These are my friends: Lindon, Orthos, and Little Blue.”

Lindon pulled Little Blue out of his pocket, frowning at me slightly. Not my fault I considered her a person and not a pet!

“Hello!” Mercy said with a wave. 

“Wait,” Lindon said, “Your name is Akura Mercy?”

Mercy nodded, though a little less eagerly. “Yes.”

“Oh,” then he looked at me, and then back at her. “You know each other from that scholar scandal in the Imperial City?”

“Yes,” I said, “She saved my hide!” I turned back to her again. “I really cannot thank you enough for that. You pulled my reputation out of the gutter.”

“I really didn’t do anything,” she said, squirming a little under the attention.

“Ah well,” I said, “Be that as it may, it’s great that we got to meet again. And so soon after the last time as well.”

She leaned against her staff as she looked at the ground, slightly forlorn. “It could have been under better circumstances,” but then she looked up with an eager smile, “So what have you been up to since we last met? Did you publish any more papers?”

I shook my head. “Sorry to disappoint. I was training quite hard, trying to prepare for my Highgold advancement, and a bunch of other things. I was more focused on refining, being honest.”

“That’s fair,” she said, “I think your work will help a lot of people, but it’s also important that you live and work for yourself as well.”

“Once I advance, people will take me more seriously,” I said. “A little tragic that that is the case, since advancing doesn’t really make you any wiser, but luckily I have a rather clear path forward.”

She clapped her hands together and beamed. “That’s good to hear!”

I looked back at Orthos, who was now shivering in his shell. “Uh, one second.” I went up to him and crouched in front of his head hole. “Orthos, I promise she’s nice. Trust me, okay? At least say hi.”

Orthos popped his head out from the hole, and I stepped out of his way. He regarded Mercy with a solemn bow of his head. “Greetings, honoured Akura.”

Mercy gave an awkward chuckle. “Hello. I’m Mercy.”

Orthos nodded again, and then returned to his shell. “I need rest,” he lied.

I stood up and gave Mercy a shrug. “He’s just sleepy. Please don’t mind.”

Lindon hesitated to speak before he did. “I’m aware that the Akura is a clan headed by a Monarch… but why is everyone so frightened of you? I thought your clan presided over us.”

“Oh,” Mercy said, “It’s… complicated. We’re… not exactly… nice people.”

Lindon’s eyes widened. “Oh.”

“You’re nice,” I said to her. She bowed her head and grinned. A touch of red seemed to paint her cheeks. Wow, she was quite easy to fluster. Was that canonical? I guess nobody talked to her the way I did.

“Thank you,” she mumbled. 

A voice boomed across the staging ground. “Attention, all Skysworn candidates! Gather around!”

We approached the voice, and reached a thick line of people almost a hundred meters wide, before what was probably the largest obstacle course I had ever seen in my life.

I flashed Mercy, Lindon and Orthos encouraging grins. “See you on the other side.”

000

Mercy and I were neck in neck almost during the entire race, which I felt was total bullshit. I should have been faster. Suu was rocketing her quick, but it was her blundering that forced it to slow down.

I blasted a hole through the brick wall with barely a thought. She passed through that same hole and almost stole a march on me.

The orbs flying around were annoying, and I tried to cut as many of them away as I could, kiting a few near to Mercy. I stuck my tongue out at her and she looked at me in surprise.

I simply outran the bees, trying to put as much distance between Mercy and I, but during this one stretch of road free of any obstacles, she built up enough speed to overtake me.

Then launchers started raining arrows on us with rounded tips, meant to bruise and, at worst, only break bones. Once again, it became a matter of just outrunning the bullshit.

At the very end of the finish line, I stabbed my spear over the end of the obstacle course just as Mercy took the lead.

I came to a stop very nearly tripping over my feet and rolling on the ground.

Mercy actually did, throwing herself off Suu violently as she accidentally braked too hard.

Thankfully, I was in the way of that. I jumped a little, spreading my arms to catch her. She likely weighed more than me, so I didn’t try to stand and take all that force head-on.

Instead, I skidded against the ground, slowly dispersing the force. Then I dropped her on her feet.

“I just want to make it clear that I won,” I said. “My spear reached over the finish line.”

“Uh,” she said abruptly, completely taken aback. She looked around for Suu, and ran over to get it. Then she just tripped.

I blinked.

It felt like she was running in a nightmare, just unable to control her body. It took her almost ten seconds to reach the staff that was only about ten meters away. “Got it!” she said as she stood up. Then she looked over my shoulder. “Oh!” she said. I turned to look as well, and saw Yerin looking at us, from a different obstacle course’s finish line entirely, arms folded. When she saw me looking, she looked away. 

Ah, Yerin had likely scanned her, right?

“That’s my other friend,” I said, “Yerin.”

“She’s a Highgold,” Mercy observed enthusiastically. 

“That shouldn’t be too impressive to someone like you,” I said to her with a grin. “You must be surrounded by Lords.”

“Yeah,” Mercy said unsurely, “But I know what it means to advance in a vassal state. You guys don’t have it as easy, right?”

“Unfortunately not,” I said with a sigh. Not yet, at least. But I couldn’t tell her that. She could be wiretapped somehow. There had to be a way for Malice to determine whenever she was facing imminent death, so she could swoop in and stop time to save her life. That could be a very rudimentary ability, or it could straight up be full-on surveillance. “We’ll make do.”

Just then, Orthos arrived with Lindon in his mouth, broken and battered. We rejoined Yerin then, and Mercy tried to have a conversation with her, though Yerin was still a little… standoffish. Beltless Yerin was very prickly.

Around thirty minutes later, the end of the race was announced with the last of the fifty Lowgolds making it through, and the winners were told to go to the Skysworn apprentice mess hall to grab lunch.

Lindon had fully healed from the stings, cuts and bruises by that time, and we went to eat as a group.

In the mess hall, I felt a familiar chill in my spiritual perception and turned to find Chiara approach us. She, like the rest of us, wore the standard sacred arts robes of Skysworn apprentices, only she had a button indicating that she was a full member.

“Hey!” I said. She didn’t stop until she was inches away from me, and then she gave me a deep kiss.

My eyes widened in surprise, but I didn’t hate it. She pulled back and fixed me with a look that I wasn’t quite familiar with. “You saw my win?” I asked her.

She nodded to Mercy, who was behind me. “She won.”

“Traitor,” I folded my arms. The Void Incel and the Sword Femcel looked quite uncomfortable with the PDA. I shot them an apologetic look. Really, I wasn’t sure about that myself.

“We haven’t met,” Chiara told her. Mercy tripped over her words to reply.

“I, uh, my name is Akura Mercy,” she gave a nervous grin. 

“Pleasure,” Chiara said with a bow of her head, “I am Chiara Arelius.” Then she looked pointedly at me.

Like I had read a dream tablet, I instantly knew what was going on.

And… really, man?

“This is my girlfriend,” I said, throwing my arm over her shoulder very brotherly, “The love of my life, and a woman I love very, very much,” I said.

Chiara’s smile tightened. Too much.

I gave a tiny shrug and a smug smirk. Are you happy?

Her grin reduced. You’re on thin ice.

I sighed. Well, fuck me then.

My friends caught up with my girlfriend. Even Yerin was down to talk to her, and we had food on the same table.

Chiara bade me to finish up quickly.

Fuck me, indeed. And not the pleasant kind.

After we were done, she took my hand and led me out of the mess hall. “Where are we headed?” I asked her.

“To see my Path,” she said to me. 

“Is that a threat?”

She laughed at me. “So that was the mysterious Akura that saved your reputation.”

“I was just being nice,” I promised her. 

She took me to an open field, unused by the other Skysworn apprentices. “I didn’t suspect you of anything,” she said to me, as she soon began to do some stretches. I raised an eyebrow at her.

“I didn’t take you for the jealous type,” I folded my arms, “Not to say that wasn’t supremely attractive of you, but—”

“You’re a fool,” Chiara said to me with an amused chuckle. “Try to be more mindful of the effect you may have on people.”

I frowned. “What, her? No! She’s just very nice. And she wasn’t coming onto me or anything like that.” God. Mercy was, like, nine years old or something. Okay, that was an unfair assessment of her to be sure, but I couldn’t quite get over it. She had this childlike way to her that made it difficult to view her as an adult. It made sense, anyway. She was probably around Lindon and Yerin’s age. 

She definitely had a ranking entry I could check, but I didn’t see the point of that anyway. In any case, she definitely didn’t like me. She was just like that!

“She was unsubtle,” Chiara decided as she stood straight, “Anyway, time for my Path. You’ve never asked to see it. Why is that?”

My eyes widened. “I, uh, I like you for you,” I said, “I never thought it mattered. You’ve never asked to see my Path.”

“Well, that is because I’ve already seen it,” Chiara said, “But you’re not curious at all about mine. I suppose, perhaps, that it is because you’re friends with a Blackflame and someone that was raised by a Sage.”

And also the fact that it just didn’t figure into my interactions with people very much. I had this same issue with Nora as well.

I never did find out what she could do.

I almost said that to Chiara, but I felt like I was already tap dancing on thin ice as it was. “I’m sorry,” I told her, seriously, “I never meant to make you feel disregarded or dismissed. I do want to see what you’re capable of.”

Chiara’s grin widened. “Well, the aura is not great for what I want to do,” she began to cycle her snowy madra, and I felt a chill in my spiritual perception. “The Path of the Blizzard is an open-ended Path with a myriad of techniques associated with it. There is much you can do with my simple blend of wind and ice madra, and thanks to the patriarch’s timely instruction, I received some… inspiration.”

Madra cycled to her hands and she pointed at me. My instincts and my spirit screamed at me to dodge. I activated Starfire Surge and got out of the way right before a snowball hurtling towards me at high speeds hit me.

Chiara fired off a barrage of them afterwards.

I realised that they were probably not harmful by the fifth one. At least not directly so. Still, I could pretty much do this all—

I tripped over a small divot in the ground.

One of Chiara’s snowballs hit. It caught my arm. The snowball wrapped around the arm entirely, encasing it in rapidly stiffening ice, and it was cold to the touch. And it hurt. “Ow,” I said very emphatically.

Chiara giggled and waved her hand at me. The ice shattered. 

She hadn’t injured me or anything, but that did sting.

“I understand, Sky,” Chiara said to me. “It’s not dismissal or disrespect that has prevented you from asking about my sacred arts. It just doesn’t matter to you as much as other things. I can see that, so no need to apologize. What I’m trying to tell you is that it matters to me,” she put a hand on her chest. She spoke softly, with an encouraging tone. “I want you to know, Sky, that your junior siblings are not your only rivals in the world. I would like to be a rival to you as well.”

A feeling of warmth blossomed in my chest. This… worked.

We could reach the end together.

“Alright then,” I said, arms folded, “Show me what you’ve got, and I might consider it.”

“I’m glad you said that,” Chiara said, her grin now turning evil, “It will make the next five minutes far more bearable for me.”

Chiara dashed towards me, an aura of snowflakes dancing about her, giving her an impression of fluidity and somehow rigidity at the same time. She directed a stiff punch at me which I deflected with an elbow by striking at her wrist, only for her leg to rise in one fluid motion, like water.

I bent over backwards to dodge, turning that into a backward handspring. Starfire Surge made the maneuver less risky, as I had only exposed my back to her for a fraction of a second.

Still, a snowball ended up hitting my leg, encasing it completely in snow that then rapidly turned into ice.

It numbed, like the ice itself had some sort of paralyzing effect. It truly was a terrifying ability. Coupled with her Arelius eyes, she would likely be able to hit openings that even I couldn’t spot, much less a boneheaded handspring where I turned my eyes away from her.

She waved her hand, and the ice disappeared. “So here is how things will go,” Chiara said, “You will fight me. And you will try to tease out each and every technique of mine. So far, you’ve seen the Icebound Manacle and the Blizzard’s Fury,” I assumed the latter was that full-body Enforcement technique. “I have three other techniques that I’m trying to break in. Use your spear, Glassy. And every technique you have. You will need it.”

Fighting with Chiara was an exercise in humility and compartmentalization.

The humility part was learning to accept that I was a beast among children, and children only. The Highgolds played the grown-up game. Their skill ceiling was unfathomably higher. To hear Chiara tell it, Lindon and I would be lucky to clear the top five hundred as we currently were, even if we advanced to Highgold.

I wasn’t aiming for just impressive, though. I was aiming for the same acclaim I received in the College.

The compartmentalization part of this exercise was slowly learning to understand Chiara as something other than a lover and source of emotional succor. My trying my best to hurt her was impersonal, and I needed to switch my thinking away from doing this to hurt her out of spite, and doing this to hurt her out of a desire to see her grow.

This process was complicated, and I was just as hobbled by my own fucked up way of thinking as I was by the fact that she was so, so much stronger than me.

At the end of it all, I laid flat on the ground, Chiara standing above me with her arms folded. “You didn’t quite give it your all.”

“I’m sorry, honey,” I replied, feeling utterly defeated, “I’m trying my best to do so.”

She gave me half a smile. “I can see that.”

“You only showed me two techniques,” I muttered, feeling profoundly saddened. 

I didn’t know what to do.

I just… didn’t want to hurt her.

At all.

I was beginning to come around to Lindon’s side of things, when he fought Yerin in the Uncrowned King Tournament. This wasn’t some needless sense of chivalry or machismo. It was just hard for me to even think about laying hands on her. 

In fact, I wanted nothing in the world to ever hurt her, least of all me.

But I also wanted her to join me to eternity.

It was a sacrifice that I had to make, for the good of all.

“I was hoping that the blow to your pride would spring you into action,” Chiara said, “Your pride as a sacred artist.”

A hot feeling of passion whirled in my chest. “What is pride before the ineffable reality of my bond to you?”

She rolled her eyes, clearly not taken.

I sat up straight. “We can do this,” I said, “No, I mean, I can do this.” I had to. There had to be some way. Just had to reprogram my brain a little bit. “Rules,” I said. “We can come up with rules, and then later we can have a session where we talk, and make sure what we did wasn’t so bad. And if it was, we can change things up for the next round.”

“Is that what you need?”

I nodded confidently. “That would be a start. I’m just…”

“Scared?” Chiara completed.

I hated to admit it, but, “Yes.”

“Of hurting me?”

I nodded. “And of losing you. Chiara, I’ve never had a healthy relationship with violence before. Training with my junior siblings is different. I can feel resentment and hate them in my head all I want, and feel superior over them for a tiny bit of time, and it won’t matter. I love them to bits, but… it’s different with you. I don’t want to feel any other way towards you.”

She hummed as she gave me her hand. I took it, and she pulled me up to my feet. Then she pulled me in for a hug. “We can do all of that,” Chiara said. “And you shouldn’t worry about me. A little violence during training won’t scare me off that easily.”

There was no way I could accurately explain to her how much of a no-no that hitting your lover was. No, surely that was still a phenomenon on Cradle. Just because Iron bodies made genders roughly equivalent in strength didn’t mean that domestic abuse didn’t exist. She surely knew that as well.

We’d set up rules, but for myself, there was one that I would always follow:

Don’t hate Chiara. Not even a microdose to up my ability. I’d be fighting her cold, without that stupid emotional crutch, and I’d learn valuable lessons from that as well.

But I’d do my damndest never to let that filthy venom touch my thoughts on her. 

000

Against my better judgement, I still went to go see Yerin, this time carrying something nice for her. Chiara had told me to give it time as well, Eithan wasn’t around, and I was beginning to resent the cold shoulder treatment.

I went from my own room to hers, knocking on her door once I had confirmed that she was alone, which she almost never was. If the implications wouldn’t become crystal clear after doing so, then Lindon and Yerin would have probably moved in with each other by now. They only held onto this one thread of pretense. She was only here because this was exactly when she had decided to split from Lindon and go to sleep.

Yerin opened it, already frowning. She would have sensed me from inside, and yet she had opened the door. Progress.

“Can we talk?” I asked her, bringing around what I was holding behind myself: a bowl of blueberry-flavoured ice cream. 

She looked down at it, then up at me. “It’s late.”

“Have you ever had ice cream?” I asked her.

“I’m not hungry.”

“When do you want to talk, then?”

She frowned in annoyance, but instead of slamming the door on my face, she opened it wider and stepped aside.

I took off my shoes and walked in. “This icy treat works really well when you want to broach heavy topics.” I put it on her dining table. I had brought two spoons with me, and I stabbed one of them on the other side, beckoning her to sit across from me.

She did.

Seeing her without her belt was still something of a shock. I wonder how much weirder it would be once she hit peak Truegold and could get rid of her back-swords.

“Do you really think I don’t care, Yerin?”

I had thought it over many times since our last conversation, but that aspect of her accusation couldn’t be more off-base. I needed her to know that she was wrong. Maybe that was a selfish and unconstructive impulse of me, but how else was I supposed to respond to a sudden grievance? I had the right to defend myself.

Yerin took the spoon and scooped a bit of the giant mound of ice cream. It was a piece way too big for her, and she stuffed her face with it. She didn’t seem to mind at all, just chewing the ice cream and then swallowing it. What the fuck.

Finally, she spoke. “I’d contend it’s more about the fact that you know everything about us, and I know next to nothing about you.”

I sighed, feeling an uncomfortable clenching in my chest. 

I told her about my childhood on Cradle. What I could remember from it at least. As I did, and as she asked me questions, I realized… there were blank spots. Things I couldn’t quite remember. I worked alongside an array of people, and I remembered exactly none of them, except for my Gray Robe supervisor, and I did not even remember his name. I knew him by his face.

It seemed that… I just came to exist at some point. I knew that not to be true, but there really wasn’t anything more substantial than that. I was a tiny child working away for the clan. I was taught how to read the books, how to extract their core truth—a string of the most meaningful aspects of the work, written in a nigh-illegible natural language code that we were taught could reflect all of written reality—and how to insert that into the algorithm for further processing.

I had no idea who my parents were, who gave me food, who I talked to. I couldn’t imagine an existence bereft of all social connections, yet… nothing was there.

And when I had read the black book, I gained knowledge of another world entirely, another life, different in so many ways. Was it a complete fabrication? Or did Earth perhaps exist? 

The more I revisited the memories, the more I remembered the over four-hundred thousand books I had fully memorized. Some of them did make reference to Earth. If the books existed, then Earth should as well, somewhere in the Way.

And I had copied the life of one Earthling, tried to copy their personality as well. Not on my own volition, of course.

I knew nothing about the black book. Only that it was where our data went to when we updated our algorithm.

And that it could show the future.

Yerin’s eyes glazed over as I talked. “Sorry,” I said to her. “I… honestly, it’s like chasing phantoms. All I’m certain about was everything that happened after I arrived in the Desolate Wilds. Everything that came before is just…”

I took another scoop of the ice cream.

I chuckled mirthlessly. “There’s nothing to know, I guess. Because before this, I was nothing.”

“I wish I had a chance to tell you anything about me that you didn’t know,” Yerin said, “Scrapes me raw that I never got the choice. How can I call you a friend if you know every day of my life? That you know what to say to make me do things that I don’t want to do?”

I bowed my head. “I didn’t mean to manipulate you, Yerin. I should have been more sensitive about the Blood Shadow, about what you were going through.”

And if I really did have all the power over her to bend her to my bidding, then I would at least try to use the right words to make her forgive me.

Instead, I had to resort to blundering my way to a good outcome.

Because the thing is, I didn’t actually know Yerin. I looked her in her eyes. They would become red in time, mirroring a red lock of hair that would soon join that change in appearance. For now, she was just her: hair cut razor-straight, covered in thin scars, two sword-limbs growing from her back. I knew the exterior. And I knew her likely responses to certain events.

That didn’t mean I knew her, did it?

By the time I had reached this realization, the bowl of ice cream was empty.

“It’s late,” she told me. I wanted to protest that, but she was already on her feet, and I didn’t get the impression that she was going to budge.

I took the bowl and headed back to Chiara’s dorm.

She waited by her tiny living room. “How’d it go?”

I just headed towards her bed and sighed. “It went,” I said as I laid down on her bed. “You weren’t listening?”

She went to her room and joined me in bed. “You were talking about your past. I didn’t want to overhear that.”

“Hmm,” I said. “I wish you had overheard it.” I didn’t have the energy to repeat anything.

“You’re tripping over your feet to tell me every little thing about yourself, like that’s what truly matters to me.”

I sighed. “Maybe it matters to me. To have something to talk about before my time in the Blackflame Empire. To have something substantial to say about… whatever the hell I came from.”

“Glassy?”

“Hm?”

“Sky?”

I cracked a grin. “Hm?”

“It’s a funny name,” she teased.

“Thanks,” I said, “Made it up myself. Better than my previous name.”

“What was your previous name?”

I recited a long and meaningless string of numbers. It was impractically long, fourteen digits, suggesting there were that many people in need of unique identifiers in the organization. That couldn’t be the case, however. More than likely, the numbers meant something else.

“I was a collection of numbers,” I said, “Empty. Then I adopted an illusion of a full life, lied to by some arcane book. It filled my head up with memories of a life where I had parents and siblings and hopes and dreams… a personality… all false. Then I experienced the world, this world, and here I am. With a new name. An empty glass rife for the filling, and a potential as vast as the sky. I haven’t filled my glass or reached my potential. Each morning, I wonder if I will wake up in a bed worlds away, and the sacred arts, the Blackflame Empire, everything I had experienced, was all just a dream.” A bad dream.

We were quiet for a long time, and I wondered if I had put her to sleep with that.

Then, “You are something to me.”

I grinned placidly, letting myself melt into her embrace. I could feel the tendrils of sleep slowly take me. “I’ll take it,” I murmured.