IBTRFL Chapter 9

The fingertips that had been lying perfectly still gave a sudden, sharp jerk.

A sharp intake of breath followed, and Aer's head snapped up. Purple eyes, heavy with sleep, swept the cave and gathered it in.

Faint light filtering in from outside lit the cave.

"What time is it…"

A voice dry as sand scraped out. Aer pushed her disheveled hair back and sat up.

"What was I doing…"

The black soul stone lying on the ground gleamed as if in greeting. That sinister glint, and the memories of yesterday burst through like a floodgate giving way. Her body flinched—reflex before mind.

Aer's face had gone pale. She rubbed her goosebumped forearms with frantic hands.

Crazy old sage. No other description seemed quite right.

But his words about obtaining power had not been empty. The method was extreme and dangerous, but the result was undeniable.

"Now I understand why he warned the way he did."

The body is the vessel that holds the shape of the soul.

Unbaked, still-soft clay could be expanded. But a vessel that has already been fired in the kiln—one already complete—shatters beyond salvage.

Had she succumbed to a fit of reckless bravado before her regression and chewed a soul stone, she would have said her farewells to the world on the spot.

The pain that had felt like dying had passed. In its place rose the perfectly natural desire to try out this new power—like a child given a toy.

Aer closed her eyes and brought to mind the conversation with a wizard whose name she'd never learned.

A mage's soul, unlike an ordinary person's, runs close to nature itself, he had said. To the vast, endlessly circulating, endlessly flowing nature that forms the source of all things.

Just follow where it leads.

Her original soul and the water element began to resonate—and an enormous wall of water came down on her head at the exact same moment.

Aer thrashed, utterly unable to keep her bearings under the cold water falling in great slabs like boulders.

"Damn…"

She exhaled in short, interrupted bursts. Her bright silver hair clung to her in slimy ropes like seaweed. Her clothes, sodden through, weighed on her like armor.

She lifted a hand and pushed the hair out of her eyes.

On the floor of the narrow cave, a large muddy puddle had formed. Her purple eyes trembled, without end and without stopping.

Something—sweat or water, impossible to say—ran down her throat. She had thought of a single mouthful of water to wet her throat. She had not—she would swear this on her honor—wanted enough water to fill an oak cask for aging port wine to the brim.

Dazed, Aer wiped the dripping water from her face. The clothes glueing themselves slickly to her skin. The smell of wet earth rising from the soaked ground.

The full-body griminess of being soaked through was considerably larger than any joy at having managed magic.

Her bleary, unfocused gaze found the black soul stone where it had washed to, far across the cave floor.

"Oh, right. That thing…"

She had once taken a contract to clear out an underground labyrinth. What she found waiting there was a living shadow, rippling and wrong.

Dozens of arms and legs multiplying endlessly, a black void that swallowed everything around it, the uncanny ability to slip freely through darkness at will. She had not escaped easily.

Five of the six who went in died before the extermination was complete.

The creature's body dissolved like mist and scattered as black ash, then clumped back together into a single mass. The soul stone that formed from it had a gleam nearly identical to the one sitting across from her now.

She could not bring herself to eat it.

Fire and water had already put on that kind of spectacle—and now it was going to be darkness. Grim imaginings packed her head—being dragged beneath the floor and consumed by a grotesque shadow, suddenly collapsing while vomiting blood, or just straight-up dying.

The vessel had been widened. She had found a way to manage the power of soul stones. But learned fear is not easily shed.

"This one—later."

Aer buried the black soul stone in dry ground away from the water. Then she scratched at her damp hair and got to her feet.

The wet mud gripped her shoes and would not let go. She had expected it to be difficult, but controlling this magic properly was going to take time.

Aer muttered to herself, scrubbing her shoes against dry earth.

"If what I just used had been fire instead…"

The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood straight up. She let out a slow breath and walked toward the cave entrance.

The chilly predawn air crept through her wet clothes. The damp fabric, already stealing her body heat, seized on this new development and took the rest with enthusiasm.

She shuddered, tucked her arms across her chest, and lifted her face. The moon, pushed aside by a sun still barely risen, was fading by degrees.

"Big trouble."

Priests began their rounds before dawn. The devout and diligent ones would have finished morning prayers by now and started cleaning.

She looked down and saw herself—soaked through, a complete disaster.

If she ran into a priest looking like this, she wouldn't just be hauled in front of the director and interrogated. She'd have to explain that she'd been sneaking in and out of the forest.

If that happened, every plan she'd so carefully built would dissolve into nothing.

Aer kicked off the ground and ran. Her body moved differently from yesterday—light as wind. The forest path she had labored over in both directions felt flat and easy beneath her feet.

Not long after, the orphanage building came into view through the thick tree trunks. She slowed and listened.

Her sharpened hearing snagged on the noise of the forest. Beneath the birdsong and the sound of wind moving through the trees, she caught faint voices.

She ducked quickly behind a tree trunk. Two priests were sweeping the front of the orphanage, talking in low voices. The open ground at the rear was silent.

Good thing I left the window open.

She moved around to the back of the building. She found her window, shoved it wide, and forced herself through. A small body had its inconveniences, but there were moments like this when it was genuinely useful.

"—the founder of the Atre Monastery is a figure with quite a lot of room for debate, isn't he?"

"That's true. His conduct during the years he spent as a priest of the Demon Cult was considerable. But his penitential scholarship on heretical doctrine—you can't dismiss it."

"That's fair. Those texts are still used as the standard reference for heretical studies."

The voices of the priests reached her the moment she shut the window.

She'd made it. Aer pressed a hand to her chest, then pulled open a drawer with a somewhat disgusted expression. Inside, folded neatly, were clothes and a towel carrying the faint smell of sunlight.

She toweled off the water and peeled away the clothes that had adhered to her skin like leeches. With the culprit removed, her body temperature returned to something reasonable.

Aer collapsed face-down onto the bed making a noise that defied description.

Comfortable. Warm. That she had been crossing back and forth over the line of death less than half a day ago felt like a lie.

She turned over and looked up at the worn wooden ceiling.

"Kardo is…"

She shut her mouth immediately.

Whenever she was still—whenever she wasn't doing anything—Kardo surfaced. She had become, without quite deciding to, the kind of person who dwelt on memories. Like a poet still searching for the last line of a love that was never finished.

Evenings beside a fire, talking about nothing. A flower field where they'd walked without speaking, hands held. The snow-bright plain where she had said what she'd said.

Small and beautiful moments, each one hanging like a painting on the walls of her heart.

She knew it was foolish. Kardo didn't know her.

The man she had loved most in her life existed nowhere now. The faded memories that lived only in her head—she was simply turning them over, alone.

"No."

She shook her head.

Heroes are exhausted. Kardo had been too. She did not want to paint her death into the canvas of his already complicated life.

If the you who does not remember me is happier than the you who would.

She pressed at the dark skin beneath her eyes—once, twice—and reached for the desk. Fumbled once, then closed around something solid—a white envelope sealed in red wax.

On the glossy wax surface, a level scale and a sharp dagger were etched in relief.

Aer opened the envelope with care, making sure not to crack the seal, and drew out the letter. It began with a light greeting—blessings of the goddess upon you.

Two long pages: an introduction of himself; an explanation that urgent business had forced his departure; encouragement that things would be all right from here; a reminder to make sure to eat properly; and finally, a request for a reply.

"This man. Always exactly the same."

Her eyes stayed on the letter for a while.

That neat, gentle handwriting, contrary to his appearance.

Valor had always possessed qualities that didn't fit him. Excepting his fondness for alcohol.

She placed the letter over her heart and closed her eyes.

A promise exchanged in passing drifted up, unbidden.

"When it's all over. Won't you buy me a decent drink?"

Aer murmured, her voice small.

"This time, I'll keep that promise."