The Effaced: Chapter Twenty-Seven

As Hadiya and I floated through the skylanes and moved towards where we’d left the automobile, I worked on my wounds. 

I wasn’t a doctor or even a field nurse, but I’d had to learn a few tricks in the arena, and I was using one of them now as I unwove thin threads of metal and stitched together the cuts that my false copy had left. 

“Let’s hide in one of those buildings,” Hadiya said, pointing to one of the slightly rundown warehouses on the mountain that was used to unload goods from the few people who actually trekked through the mountains, rather than using airships.

I knitted my eyes together but nodded, and we landed outside one of them. I infused my fourth arch-star and then used a bit of metal magic to pick the lock, before swinging it open, and we headed in. 

“Why are we hiding?” I asked as I shut the door behind us.

Hadiya snapped and held her hand out. 

“Give me the sword, a hair, and some of your skin. I’ll perform a burning ritual, so that if anyone collects what we left behind during the fight it can’t be used against us.” 

I paused, then nodded and handed over the blade, ran a hand through my hair until a few had fallen out, then scraped along my skin with a knife. While I did that, Hadiya pulled out chalk and started drawing on the concrete floor, forming a ritual circle. 

It took her several minutes, but as soon as she finished she started digging around in her bag and pulling out various components. Salt, iron, gold, silver, dirt, wood shavings, and other things entered the circle, followed by a matchbook, and then she tossed me an aura crystal. 

“Congratulations, you get to be my aura-generator to get this thing powered.” 

“Can’t it just draw off ambient aura for power?” I asked curiously as I began to feed the crystal power. A moment later, it was full, and I tossed it back to her. She drained it into the spell, then tossed it back to me, and we repeated it. 

“If you want it to take two weeks, sure. Ambient aura’s thin, and I don’t have an archstar to draw extra power.” 

“Ah,” I said, and we continued passing the crystal back and forth before she pulled out a knife, pricked her bicep to get some of her own blood, then smeared it, along with some of her skin and hair. She spat in the spot she’d dawn, and had me do the same, then she finally lit the match and dropped it into the pile. 

There was a flash of light as she completed the spell, and I felt heat rush over my body, burning away the blood that was caking on my skin, the hair and skin that had shed onto my clothes, and any other loose bits of me that happened to be hanging around. 

Hadiya took a slow breath and nodded. 

“Good. Now there’s no evidence that we were there.” 

“I doubt they need evidence. There’s evidence that I wasn’t the one who killed the senator, but that hasn’t exactly stopped them.” 

“Point. At least they can’t throw any curses our way through the link, or easily track us.” 

“Think your curse will have destroyed the sample the constables were using to track me?” I asked. 

“I doubt it. They were behind wards, and strong ones at that. I’m good, but not so good that I can break through one of the five precincts' wards with a type of ritual magic that’s not my specialty.”

That implied that if she was using her specialty of inter-planar magic, she would be able to, and I raised an eyebrow at that, but didn’t argue with her. 

“Plus,” Hadiya said as she sat down and leaned back against the wall. “The constables are going to swarm all over that entire part of the city. Even an out of the cordon area of the undercity is going to have investigators over it when it blows up like that.” 

I glanced at her. 

“You have access to airship records, right?” 

“Not unless they’re an Elucidate Lab owned ship.”

“Ah,” I said. “We might want to check with one. The one that False-Mist attacked Kelly and I with. Those shots that hit the building… I’m thinking they were force magic fired from an airship cannon.” 

“I concur,” Hadiya said. “Did you get the ID number of the airship False-Mist was riding?” 

“I did,” I said. “If we could get the constables to arrest the Arenamaster and False-Mist, that would at least take one of our problems out of the running.” 

“Maybe,” Hadiya said. “Though with Horse dead, our best lead on who actually killed Senator Ermonte is dead too.” 

“Can we track the flesh elemental angle?” I asked. “There can’t be that many people who are capable of keeping a flesh elemental inside of someone else’s body for an extended period of time, just to ensure loyalty.” 

“Mmm,” Hadiya said. “I don’t know. It’s difficult, but any talented enough druid with the right ritual to keep feeding power to their familiar could probably have pulled it off. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of people who could do that in the city.” 

I let out a low curse and sat down across from Hadiya. It was far too cold in the mountains for me to want to talk, and after the fight we’d just gone through, it was exhausting. 

“I need a nap,” Hadiya said.

I nodded my agreement. 

“Rhys will worry if we don’t make it back, though,” I said. “We shouldn’t.” 

Hadiya grumbled out her agreement, and we waited for the better part of an hour before I re-locked the warehouse and we headed out, taking the skylanes towards where Hadiya had left the car. The constables had roped off a section of the ground city, but the people moving through the air were harder to stop. Still, there were several floating platforms of constables hovering around, with different magical tools like compass, wands, and staves all out to keep an eye on things. 

I tossed Fake Mist’s sword beneath my feet and flew on it, as if it was a flying disc shaped like a sword, and Hadiya drank another potion and took off flying as well. 

Thanks to Hadiya’s hasty burning spell, we didn’t set off any of the detections that the constables had set up, and by moving through the air with a degree of confidence that bordered on arrogance, we weren’t even selected for a random search. 

We relaxed once we got back to the automobile, and Hadiya began driving us through the city and back to the Elucidate Labs office, then we staggered down the stairs and to her office. 

When we threw the door open, Rhys’ eyes widened, and Kelly bolted to his feet. 

“You’re injured,” Rhys said, and Kelly immediately poked at where I’d made my makeshift metal stitching. 

“Watch it,” I grumbled at Kelly, who pulled his finger back quickly, then I looked at Rhys. 

“I’ll be fine. I assume the lab has iodine I can use to clean it out, then my metal stitching should hold fine. It’s not too deep, I’ve had worse.”

“I’ll get it,” Kelly said. “I always remember where the medical kit is.” 

Rhys paled, but nodded, and I gently ruffled Kelly’s hair as he rushed down the hall. 

“Are you two okay?” he asked, and Hadiya shrugged. 

“The Arenamaster and her demon are ritualists, not combat mages,” she said. “I’m down to less than half of my usual stock of single-use artifacts and potions. Most of my tattoos and battle artifacts will need time to restore themselves, but apart from some curse magic that I was unable to stop, I’m fine. I’ll have to change the curse around so it releases safely, rather than discharging at once, but that’s well within my abilities.” 

I grunted my agreement, not too surprised that Hadiya had been cursed. Not all demons were the best curse mages, but those from the Throne of the Gambler tended to have a lot of ability with luck manipulation, and I knew the Arenamaster had studied it somewhat. 

Rhys muttered his condolences and offered his help with locking away and slowly releasing the curse, then looked at me. 

“I lost my gun and sword,” I groused, “Got some scratches, but otherwise I’m fine. Like I said, none of them are especially deep. And hey, I picked up Fake-Mist’s sword.” 

Rhys brightened, and I raised an inquisitive eyebrow, but then Kelly returned and threw the first aid kit at me. 

“Here you go boss!” he said cheerfully. 

I grabbed the iodine and some of the disposable cotton cloths that were in the kit, then stripped my shirt off. Rhys turned about seven shades of purple, and I had to hide the mirth I felt at that. Had he really never seen a man shirtless before? He was my age, not some blushing teenager. Though the fact that he still acted that way was somewhat endearing, in a strange way. 

I cleaned my cuts out, then wrapped some gauze around the deepest one, the one from where Fake-Mist had stabbed me, and as I was doing this, Hadiya began to recount everything that had happened to us while we were out. 

I shaped some basic cleaning glyphs in the air and cast them over my clothes, then pulled my now-clean shirt back on and glanced over at Rhys, Kelly, and Hadiya. 

“Do we try to pursue Egress? There’s a chance she might know something.” 

I doubted it, since there wouldn’t be a need to kill Horse if Egress was the one who had been contracted, but it was possible. If they were really trying to muddy the waters as much as possible, they might place death triggers in anyone who had the skill to kill the senator. 

“Do we have any other leads?” Hadiya asked, sounding… tired. 

“What was the Arenamaster doing?” Rhys asked. “Her demon obviously brought them to the Fallen Void in the end, but I’ve never heard of a spell that could teleport you into another realm without needing an open portal.” 

“It’s possible,” Hadiya said idly. “Not easy. Incredibly delicate magic. Technically, it needs less power than a portal, but it’s several hundred times more complicated.” 

I raised my eyebrow. I had never heard of that, but if anyone could do that kind of thing, a Demonic Heir like Alyphize could.

“And what was the magic she was doing when she approached?” Kelly added. 

“I actually have an answer for that one,” I said. “The Arenamaster collected and sold a lot of aura sparks. Demonic magic is especially well suited to harvesting and storing aura sparks, and there is a few seconds, maybe a minute or two while someone is dying or dead that they can be harvested. They also sell extremely, extremely well towards demons. That’s where the myths about them buying or eating souls or whatever come from. She was probably just sucking them out of everyone around us with a spell that used demonic magic.” 

“Is she an archmage with the familiar-fusion arch-star?” Rhys asked. “I mean, if she’s able to cast demonic spells like that…” 

“She and Alyphize have a strange relationship,” I said, “But I don’t think so, no. She just works demonic magic into her ritual spells using power stolen from the Fallen Void.” 

“Is Alyphize a Throne? An Heir? An Aspirant?” Hadiya asked levelly.  

“I have no idea what those mean!” Kelly said cheerfully. 

I sighed as I prepared to add a lecture about demons onto the list of things I was going to have to tell Kelly.