Chapter Fourteen.

One frantic trip to the laundry (and a very brief shower) later and I was at least somewhat respectable. Leigh had even helped do something with my hair to make it look better— though that mostly involved him waving his hands around mystically while making tiny adjustments and giving me suggestive eyebrow waggles punctuated by terrible advice that I absolutely will not repeat. It wasn’t enough to entirely overcome my lingering dysmorphia whenever I caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror, because it still wasn’t me, but I thought I actually looked good. Just now that the objective of my date had changed to be an actual date, I wasn’t sure if it was good enough.

So, completely ready to go and practically vibrating with nerves, I checked the clock on the wall and promptly realized that it was only just after lunch— my date was a good four hours away. Facepalming, I sank back down onto my bed with a groan.

This is gonna be a long day.

I’d only been waiting for about an hour before I heard a pounding knock on my door that startled me out of a light doze. Minor alarms had occurred, but noticeably less frequently than when I’d been out with Shani so the ship’s motion had gradually lulled me down. I rushed over to open the door, but was immensely disappointed to find the burly form of Grafton looming instead of Shani. He grunted disdainfully at my appearance.

“Captain wants to see you. This way.”

Without a backward glance he marched off, leaving me to shove down my irritation and scramble after him. Grafton set a quick pace through the bowels of the ship and in a few minutes we approached a slightly more ornate looking door towards the ship’s stern. The style was roughly the same, but some scrollwork had been etched into the steel frame of the hatch along with several other marks of importance.

Grafton knocked on the door with significantly more respect than he’d shown to mine and called out.

“Captain? Mr Baines to see you as ordered, sir.”

“Enter.” Came the brusque reply.

The burly man gave me another disapproving look before he opened the hatch and gestured at me to enter. I stepped into the room, looking around curiously to see that it was much bigger and better appointed than my own. There was a full lounge, with couches arranged around a small coffee table, and a dining table with seats for ten off to the side. The back wall had another hatch that I assumed led to the bedroom, and the other side from the dining table had what looked like a private bathroom. Directly in front of me was an enormous wooden desk that I couldn’t help wondering how they got in the room with several chairs in front of it and Captain Teadran seated behind. He was reading through some papers when I walked in, but looked up sharply and gestured for me to sit after a moment before going back to reading.

Cocking my head, I shrugged and obeyed.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” I asked after sitting in the surprisingly comfortable chair.

“Yes. I’d like to clear the air a bit with you, Mr Baines.” He replied, leaning back in his chair. “I had my reservations about bringing you aboard. No amount of digging on my part revealed any House Baines on record, and while I at first assumed you’d given me a false name, there are no mages with your skillset at your age on record either— and the Mysterium keeps very thorough records. You seem to have appeared whole-cloth in Delmoth four days ago, with no origin or background of note and a rather… expensive skillset. This makes you a mystery, and I hate mysteries. However, you’ve given an admirable showing this morning and given no cause for undue concern thus far, so I was prepared to overlook your peculiarities.”

Teadran paused, staring at me and measuring my reaction while I did my best to keep my expression neutral. After a tense moment, he gestured towards the dining table.

“Typically as a ship’s mage you would be invited to dinner here in my cabin with the officers. I was making arrangements to that effect when I was informed by Miss Zaraiah that the two of you have… other plans.”

Ah shit.

The atmosphere quickly turned tense as Teadran leveled an imposing stare at me.

“Now, Esshani is a grown woman and she can do as she likes. That being said, not only did I personally assure her father I’d look out for her, but she was practically raised on board this ship. Our families together have jointly owned this vessel for three generations, and I consider her to be family. So you can understand my concern when an unknown mage of uncertain origin arrives and arranges for a private dinner on the first day.”

The Captain’s gravelly voice was hard, and I had to swallow my nervousness while he held up a hand to forestall my protests.

“I’m not forbidding you. As I said, she’s her own woman. Just understand that while some young men of station feel they are entitled to certain… liberties when in private with a woman, if you try to push her the slightest bit beyond what she is comfortable with, then there isn’t a soul aboard who won’t see you gutted for it. And when we get to port? Not one of us will say anything but that another cocky boy got taken by the wilds. Am I clear?”

There was a clear threat in his voice now, but instead of cowing me my nervousness vanished under a flash of white-hot anger. First at the thought I’d do anything to Shani, but mostly that after everything I’d fought to get here I was being threatened by just some… regular man. Maybe it was the background stress of everything still gnawing at me, but when I heard the threat something snapped.

“I… understand your concerns, sir.” I growled out, standing slowly, struggling to keep the tendrils under my skin from writhing with agitation but unable to keep the chair from creaking loudly under the strength of my grip. “But I wouldn’t do that. Ever.”

My aura leaked out, rising from my skin in a burning corona of stellar lights. Diminished as I was now, even with my nerves screaming in protest, rising fury made the magic come to my call.

“Don’t threaten me again.”

I made my own way back to my cabin after the tense meeting, fuming the entire way. I guess it was nice to no longer be nervous about the date, but somehow I doubted that showing up as pissed as I was now would be much better. It just rankled me so much that a week ago I strong-armed the freaking gods into letting me back onto Haven after fighting off an ancient apocalypse beast, and now somehow I was getting pushed around by pedestrians and threatened by boat captains. If I wanted to, I could end this stupid world and—

No.

I smothered that line of thought as soon as it made its appearance. It was a sobering bucket of ice water on my anger as I played out the direction my thoughts had been taking me.

Did I really just think that?

The mindset behind it was so… entitled. And foreign. Was I really going to hold the world hostage in my head, mentally debating whether every slight pushed me over the edge enough that I was now willing to kill millions of people? Possibly billions? It was too much. Nausea built up in my stomach at the thought of my actions killing Joan, or Leigh, or Shani even though we’d just barely met. I wouldn’t— couldn’t— allow myself to go down that road. Maybe it was naive of me, but I had my own sense of honor and adhering to it might be the only thing to keep me sane for the next… forever.

Another thought to avoid.

I’ll deal with eternity when I get to it, for now I have more immediate issues. Heh, I’ve literally got all the time in the world for that.

I couldn’t help a dry chuckle over my ironically least-pressing but most concerning problem right now. It was probably the only thing I could safely procrastinate on forever and it’d be totally fine. Eternity— just deal with it later! You have time. You’ll always have time…

Got a little dark there.

Thoughts like this kept me occupied for the afternoon, and before I knew it the bells rang out the sound of dinner being served. With a final check in the mirror (and a slight pinch of nervousness) I marched out of my room and down the hallway to Shani’s quarters.

Raising my hand to knock, the door abruptly swung open in front of me to show Shani standing nervously on the other side. She’d changed out of her work clothes and into a simple black blouse with flowing red sleeves over a crimson skirt. The material of her clothes looked lightweight, like they were made for a warm climate, and the hems were embroidered with golden patterns and sworls like stylized fire. Her hair had been let down from the bun it was in earlier to hang in long waves down to her waist. Basically, she looked gorgeous and I felt immensely underdressed.

She brightened visibly when she recognized me and grabbed my arm.

“You came!” Dragging me inside with surprising strength, she almost slammed the door shut behind us. “Teadran always says I can do what I want, but he still scares boys away whenever he can. He’s almost as bad as papa.” She said with a fond smile that belied the words as I got my first look at her room.

It was about a third larger than my own, laid out mostly the same but with the addition of a small table currently taking up much of the extra space. Two covered trays were laid out with utensils on top of the table, with a lit candle sitting between them providing some extra light. Looking at the setup, I couldn’t help a pang of nerves that jumped through me.

That’s… uh, romantic. Crap, this is a little fast.

Oblivious to my concerns, Shani pulled us over to the table and sat down.

“I asked Bharty to make his specialty for us— I hope you like pasta.”

With a flourish, she pulled the covers off the trays and revealed something that looked vaguely like tortellini in a buttery sauce garnished with herbs. It smelled amazing, and my mouth immediately watered as I told her that and she beamed happily.

“It’s my favorite! Bharty is the best chef in the fleet, let’s eat before it gets cold and then we can talk magic.”

With that, we both tucked into the delicacy in front of us. The food tasted as great as it smelled, and Shani was happy to fill the air with excited talk about the various events happening in the world. Most of it went straight over my head, and I had to beg off my ignorance more than once with the excuse that I’d been on an expedition to the Deep Hollows. Which led to me finally finishing the (again, heavily sanitized) version of my time with Veris I’d started telling her this morning. The conversation was nice, even though the memories of my [Blightlings]’ antics were tinged with pain and regret now. Shani was perceptive enough to pick up on my feelings and quickly switched topics, which I was very grateful for. Eventually, our dinner was finished, and the conversation turned towards the topic I was desperately hoping for— magic.

“So how exactly does the core work? What makes your own magic so different from it?”

“Well… the core itself is pretty complicated, and the exact workings are both really technical and pretty obscure by now.” She deflected, avoiding the topic to my mild frustration. “As for the differences between my magic and the core’s, that's just our Ideals. The core is… Elemental, with some other stuff mixed in. My primary Ideal is [Fire].”

As she said [Fire], the candle in front of us briefly flared up, brightening the room for an instant while the word resonated in my head. The flicker I’d felt earlier this morning while I watched Shani cast her spells came back in full force, teasing the edges of my awareness with something just beyond my grasp. It was like a whisper just out of hearing range, something I knew was important, life-changing, if I could only hear it.

“What… is that?” I mumbled quietly to myself. A glimmer entered Shani’s eyes and she smiled slowly, locking gazes with me as she reached out with one hand and cupped the flicker of candlelight.

“[Fire].” The flame flickered, disconnecting from the candle wick to float above her palm as the word grew stronger in my head. “It is many things, and it can be many things. It is shapeless like the air, and will fill any container I give to it; bend to any form I command. [Fire] is heat and light, but it is so much more than that.

Shani took a deep breath, the flame in her hand growing stronger as she concentrated.

“[Fire] is the element of change, a transition of states. It creates as it destroys, burning stored potential in a display of glory for all to see. The flame brought our ancestors out of darkness, and has remained our first guardian against the night across every nation. Even as we fear its rage, we crave its comforting warmth. What is [Fire]?”

Reaching across the table, Shani took my hand and held it next to the hovering flame in her palm.

“Whatever you need it to be. It just takes a spark…”

At her words, the fire flickered, guttering dangerously before hopping over from her hand to mine. And then I was falling, the rushing feeling of entering my soul-space overcoming me again but this time accompanied by the howling rush of [Fire] roaring through me. It spread out wildly, gleefully reaching out at everything it could grasp. I could feel the carefree abandon in it, the joy contained in flickering light that desired nothing more than to spread and consume; to exchange all for a single moment of glorious brightness. I watched it continue to spread, temporarily enraptured as it reached towards the crystal avatar of my soul.

Then, like a grumpy parent snatching up an unruly kitten by the scruff of their neck, [Cosmos] shut that down hard. Endless waves of starlight, the crushing weight of galaxies and swirling nebulae looked down at the presumptuous [Fire] with all the indifference and disdain of the infinite universe. The message resounded clearly throughout my soul— [Fire] was welcome within the [Cosmos], but it would obey, or it would end. [Law] would allow no challenges to its ultimate supremacy here.

Sufficiently cowed by my primary Ideal, [Fire] dissolved into streams of light that spread through the cosmic landscape, swirling into the many stars and bringing a new sense of depth and life to my personal universe. It was like a puzzle piece slotting perfectly into place, something that had been so obviously missing I couldn’t understand how I’d never noticed it before.

As the last remnants of fire disappeared into my soul-space, the force pulling my attention here vanished and I quickly snapped myself awake and back into my body. Blinking disorientedly, I shook my head to clear it and almost fell out of my chair when I found Shani staring intently at my face from very close by. Disappointment twisted her features into a pouty frown as I came to, and I scrambled to apologize.

“S-sorry, I don’t know what happened I—”

“Shhh…” She held two fingers to my lips and her pout was exchanged for a wry smile. “I thought something like this would happen, I could feel the Ideal reaching out for you all morning. I just kind of hoped for… eh, I’ll tell you in a minute. Right now we’ll have to cut the evening a little short. Come on, waking an Ideal takes a lot out of you and we’ve only got a few minutes before you pass out.”

“What?” I mumbled tiredly, a wave of exhaustion hitting me like a truck out of nowhere. Shani carefully helped me stand up and escorted me back to my room, pausing at the door and looking up at me.

“Will you be alright from here?”

“I think so, thanks.” I answered uncertainly, strength vanishing from my body surprisingly fast with every second.

“Good. And Ray?”

I locked eyes with her at the question, and her hands reached up to wrap around the back of my neck.

Then she kissed me.

It was like when the fire had first jumped from her to me all over again, roaring in my veins and burning at the point of contact where her lips met mine. My magic surged up involuntarily, lighting the room around us as she broke the kiss off with a giggle.

Wow.

Stepping back towards her room, Shani winked at me and tossed one last remark over her shoulder.

“I was disappointed earlier because usually when someone wakes to [Fire], the first thing they do is accidentally burn off their clothes.”

Peals of laughter followed Shani into her room, and I stared after her with my mouth open in shock. My whole face felt like it was burning as it shifted into a dumbfounded smile. Every instinct in me screamed that I should follow her, but even standing here had my legs already starting to tremble unsteadily and blackness was crawling at the edge of my vision. Giving up on the night, I stumbled over to my bed and collapsed into it, not even attempting to get undressed in my current condition. Absently, I reached up a hand to trace my lips where the feeling of that kiss still lingered.

Wow…

That was my last thought before consciousness faded. And then?

Things got weird.