The Effaced: Chapter Twenty-One

“What about me?” Kelly asked, and the moment of tension snapped. 

Rhys recovered gracefully, turning and nodding to Kelly. 

“I admit that you certainly weren’t part of our new plan – if you can even call it a plan, given the way we’ve had to scramble – but I’m happy to have you along. Most of the children who grow up in the undercity aren’t offered the chances they deserve.” 

“I’m seventeen!” Kelly protested. 

“Of course,” Rhys said with a calm smile. “What do you two say?” 

“Of course!” Kelly said. “Who doesn’t want to join a secret society?” 

“If you’re amenable, I can use a ritual room to get you a familiar that belongs to the Autumn Court. Through a quick examination with King Castello and his allies' power, we’ll make sure you’re not a spy, then we can induct you,” Rhys said. 

Kelly turned and looked at me, and I glanced at Rhys. 

“Are you footing the material costs?” 

“Of course,” he said. 

Hadiya hissed and pulled a second, smaller hourglass from her desk, then placed it atop the larger one, presumably keeping whatever shielding she had up. 

“Then do it, Kelly,” I said. “A good familiar is worth their weight in wood. Rhys, if you hurt him, I’ll–”  

I froze for a second as my brain caught up to my words. I was about to say that I would kill Rhys if he hurt Kelly.

Was I willing to kill someone? I shouldn’t be. I had put all of that behind me. 

But with everything resurging, it was easy to grow cold again.

The thing was… I believed my words. Kelly was a kid who was trying to make the best out of the bad hand that life had dealt him, and he had clung to me like I was a lifeline.

I couldn’t repay that by letting the kid get hurt. I was, in a strange way, responsible for him. 

Before I could figure out what to say, Rhys held up his hand. 

“I don’t want to hurt him. If the scans reveal he’s ill suited, we’ll just let him go. If he’s a spy for another party… things get complicated. We’ll need to suppress the memories, which is difficult to do, but is part of the point of the ritual – you allow the power into your mind.” 

“I suppose you want me to do the same?” I asked. 

“No,” Hadiya said. “You’ve denied all requests to get a new familiar, despite multiple military offers and even an offer for collaboration with a lab. But we do need to ensure you’re not a spy. As a metal mage, though, we’re going to have to use something more subtle.”

“I’ll watch Kelly’s, to make sure you don’t do anything messed up with him. If I can then clearly read the magic in the one you use on me, I’ll agree.” 

“Certainly,” Rhys said, stopping Hadiya before she could object. He shot her a look, and an understanding seemed to pass between them.

Then the sand in the hourglass and the second hourglass both ran dry, and Rhys stood up. 

“Well, you drive a hard bargain, Mist, bu–” 

“Don’t call me Mist,” I said. “Call me Axel.” 

“Axel,” Rhys said apologetically. “Shall we?” 

We all rose and wove through the hall, moving past the room where they were growing aura generators, then around a bend and past what looked like a room filled with nothing but dancing gelatin molds – I had no idea what that was about, but now that I’d had some time to let everything sink into my head, I ignored it to pursue a more pertinent idea.

“Say,” I said, as an idea crossed my head. “Can you all analyze spiritual seals? Odril, my demon, was sealed by a druid almost twenty years ago. I can still use her familiar power, but she’s completely dark in my head.” 

“Fascinating,” Hadiya said. “I am the foremost expert on using extraplanar powers in enchantment… I assume it’s a demonic seal?” 

“Angel, dreamscape, and something else.” 

“Something else?” Hadiya asked. 

“I don’t know what it is,” I said. 

“Interesting. What are the odds that it’s from the Ghoul Waste?” she asked. “It began its mild migration northward into Ulacto and Saxum about twenty years ago. If you didn’t recognize it at the time, it could be because it’s not an elemental or faerie. Wandering Path is a dead world, but its magic can be applied to sealing and separating things, so it could be that….” 

“No idea, like I said, I don’t know what it is.” I responded, feeling a bit irritated. I had just said that I didn’t know, didn’t I? 

“Hmph. If we can get you in, and can get your charges dropped, then I’ll look at the seal.”

“Thank you,” I said. 

If I could free Odril, even if she didn’t want to maintain our contract, it would be worth it. I owed her a lot. 

We stopped in a room with a massive, permanent circle set in the floor. Kelly was pointed to stand in the center, while Rhys and Hadiya moved around it, lightning runes, changing components, and chanting in a language that I thought might have been from ancient Tracktath, but I wasn’t sure. 

As interesting as it was to watch a familiar summoning in theory, the practical restrictions of the act – long ritual charging time, even with the help of aura generators, long and winding chants to appeal to the powers of another realm, and slowly working through a seemingly endless list of components while making substitutions for anything they had on hand while also ensuring the substitutions wouldn’t anger the faerie king whose power they were calling upon – well, I was sure that if I was a witch or druid who was involved in the process, it could be interesting. 

As was, I just walked around the circle once, reading the inscribed runes the best I could to make sure there were no nasty surprises. When I couldn’t find any, all I had left to do was watch them speak a dead language, light runes, and argue over components. 

I’d fallen asleep in my chair when a flash of light woke me up. I jolted to my feet, feeling guilty about the entire process. I built magic around my hands on instinct, then quickly changed the spells to a new set, since I wasn’t holding my guns. 

If I had to fight my way out of here, there was a good chance it would be now. While I might technically be more vulnerable when I was in the array, if they wanted to call up some big nasty beast to kill us, now would be their opportunity. 

I took in the scene.

The components that hadn’t been worked into the permanent circle had been consumed, and about a foot in front of where Kelly stood was a rift in mid air, like someone had punched through the fabric of reality and into another. I supposed that in a way, that was absolutely what had happened. 

Kelly froze for a second as magic poured out of the rift, and scanned him from head to toe. My fingers twitched, and the knives leapt to my hands. 

Then Kelly unfroze as a being emerged from the rift. It was vaguely fox-shaped, but had large, owl-like wings, and its fur was made of gold, rather than the standard orange. It pressed its nose to Kelly’s hand, and I saw Kelly’s aura light up. 

In a twist of silver, gold, and brown, the fox-thing bound to him, and the colors flowed into Kelly’s aura, expanding its size. In the same instant, the fox flowed back into the rift, and into Kelly’s aura at the same time, then the rift snapped shut. 

“A golden fox!” Rhys said, sounding impressed. “Those rarely accept bonds, and are almost never seen further south than Zheren. I believe they work with an entirely separate branch of the Autumn Court than the one I work with.” 

“Her name is Area,” Kelly said, a note of wonder in his voice. I felt a pang of loss, but also a pang of pride.

Hadiya arched an eyebrow and crossed her arms. 

“Area? Like… the area of a circle can be found by using the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter multiplied by the square of the circle’s radius?” 

“Ew, math,” Kelly said. “But yeah. Area.” 

“What familiar power did you get?” Rhys asked, his voice still holding notes of excitement. 

“Hmm,” Kelly said, then flexed his hand. A strange light seemed to splay out around it, then he raised his other hand and a mind magic spell began to build in it – one of the ones I recognized, a forced sleep spell. 

Hospitals used them when needed, and a few arena fighters had tried to use it. It was often effective in drawn out engagements, since even though you could fight back, pitting your willpower against the sleep magic, it was distracting and could still wear you out faster.

The strange light of the familiar power flowed into the spell, then vanished. Kelly then dissipated his spell, but the light returned, blooming out into an echo of the sleep magic. It lingered in the air for three seconds, then it too vanished. 

“Fascinating,” Rhys said, stepping forwards. “A rebirth ability. Usually that’s tied to spring, rather than autumn, but the harvesting aspects of autumn are known to produce similar things from time to time.”  

“It’s called Second Harvest,” Kelly said. “At least, that’s what my familiar’s Lord calls it? I can hold the echo with aura.”

“It’s a good ability,” I said. “You’ll need to work on quickly forming your spells and then dissolving them to get the most out of it.”

Rhys offered to show him some shaping exercises to help him get better at quickly forming and dissolving spells, so he could form it, then move on to the next spell. 

I offered some suggestions of my own, since when using my experimental rune bond to move objects through force barriers, I needed to quickly build the spell, then deactivate it the moment it passed through the force. It wasn’t quite the same as Kelly’s situation, but the rapid-swap exercises should still build him a good foundation.

Eventually though, it was my turn to stand in the circle. I removed my iron ring and undershirt, using a spell to pull it off, then visibly lit up my aura, so they could see that I wasn’t holding any sort of iron related spell to prevent the faerie from contacting his allies – whoever they were – and the ritual began again.

This time, at least, it was faster. They were still contacting their allied Faerie King, but they weren’t supplicating for a familiar, so entire portions of the spell could be left out. It still took an hour, but when it finished, I felt the power reach into me. 

It started to rifle through my memories, the good and the bad. I was out of practice with mental defenses against intrusion, but I still knew enough to five this person a hard time, so it took a monumental amount of willpower for me to not start walling away the foreign presence in my mind, stopping it from looking. 

But although it was hard, I let the faerie and his allies look into my mind.

Then I was released, after what felt like an eternity, but was closer to several seconds. I looked at Rhys, who looked troubled, but nodded, then extended a hand. 

“Welcome to the Ligature,” he said. “And for what it’s worth… I’m sorry.” 

“You saw that?” I asked, not taking his hand. 

“No, but I felt… echoes… in the words of the King when he said that you would be a good fit. He was sad. I’ve never heard King Castello said before. It must have reminded him of his own childhood.” 

I eyed Rhys, not happy with how buddied up he was with a faerie king, but accepted, nodding my head, then shook his hand. 

“Well, with that all sorted, we need to discuss how to actually root out the truth,” Hadiya said. “Because you won’t get off lightly, not unless we can prove you weren’t the one to do it, and I’m not sure that the Dancer’s testimony will be enough.” 

“Which means that we’re back to trying to track down the hitters,” I said, letting out a sigh. Rhys and Hadiya just nodded.