3 - 2 [Fool] Awakened, Blessed from a Curse

Eiden followed the Exorcist out of tunnels like a lost pup. His thoughts were blissfully empty, though the emotion of unease and fugue remained like a stain upon his breeches.

Eiden hadn’t even realized where the Exorcist was leading him until it was too late.

The Pinning Gates, the bronze-cast doors ten-span wide that divided the Undercity and Arvenpyre proper, were a thing to behold.

In cowering fear of death. For any found to try to sneak through or near would find themselves hung and drawn in the Open—the largest cavern of the Undercity—quartered and then dropped into the Soap Maker’s Pit.

Their fat would mix with the caustic substances that bubbled within the white broth of the Seifar’s Stew. The Ghastly White Feast. And then some indentured Tunneler would be forced to scrape the congealed resin at the bottom.

If the Exorcist had not told Eiden that he had burned Bert and Lisa’s bodies, he’d reckon someone would already be bathing with their soap.

The thought brought a dull spark of anger into the otherwise empty and numb husk that was Eiden’s mind. To treat human life as something so expendable was horrific. And yet here he lived.

Where a live man’s breath cost less than a fucking bar of soap.

The retinue of guards poised at the Pinning Gate, imposing in their armors of plate with shields strapped to their arms and shortswords at their hips, ignored Eiden’s passage.

They avoided eye-contact with the Exorcist, his black coat and the large sword at his back more than enough to signal he was a practitioner of the Magicking Paths.

None looked a beast in their eyes for fear of gaining unwanted attention. A mere mortal was a dog compared to the wolf that was a mage. Similar looking enough, but one was a predator proper while the other some domesticated mutt that would sooner run with its tail tucked between its hind quarters.

The doors to the Pinning Gate slid without noise, the sunlight burning through Eiden’s eyes. He lifted a hand to his face, bringing some semblance of protection. Eiden was used to scurrying underfoot, in the shadows. The warm firelight of the tunnels was much less caustic and blinding than that of Solaria.

It made a sick sort of sense that Her Light was hurtful. The Goddess Above had forgotten him and his ilk of the Undercity. Cursed with the brand of pale skin and the hacking of lung.

Pale ones. Tunnel rats. Forgotten by the Seven.

The ground transitioned from the snow-white marble to rust-colored snow and dirt. The puddles, some liquid and others frozen solid, made walking around unpleasant and dangerous without proper footwear.

Fin had given Eiden some pair of boots to wear along with socks. The feeling of footwear was strange and queer as Eiden usually walked barefoot in the tunnels, having grown thick callus on the soles of his feet.

Sounds of footsteps turned mushy with the odd sound of splashing when one stepped in a pool of water. The buildings were made of marble blistering cold to the touch. Damned cold. Deep in the tunnels were always nice and warm. Out here, the nip in the air strips away any heat.

The Exorcist spun back and gave Eiden a look around. Without a second thought, Fin removed his exorcist’s coat and gave it to Eiden to wear, cinching it at the waist with a belt.

The unexpected kindness was not lost on Eiden. Equal amounts of confusion, distrust, and gratitude warred within. Trust was a blindfold, and Eiden was not one to so easily blind himself.

Trust in the Undercity was always met with a marble shiv to the gut.

The Exorcist walked with his sword sheathed now at his left hip instead of his back, holding the metal container with his left hand.

The man’s posture was imposing even though he was not that tall. His steps sure as stone even atop gliding ice, and his gaze unfaltering. This was the look of a fighter, of one versed in both swordsmanship and the magicking arts.

"What if I don't want to be a mage?" Asked Eiden with no small amount of apprehension. He had built up the courage brick by brick, and when the words came, they did not so easily stop.

A house once crumbling could not be paused. It had to fall entirely.

"I don't even know how to read well. Hell take me, I don't know many complicated words."

"You know how’ta read, for starters. Something most Undercity dwellers don’t possess.” Said Fin with the casual ease that gravel fell down from a cliffside. “And, for an orphan, you sure talk well enough. You don't have any broken Common.

“How did you learn how’ta read? If ya don’t mind me askin’, that is.”

Fin's voice was as rough as his skin was leathery, yet Eiden did not feel any sort of hostility from the man. Even with his newborn sense of spirit.

Hell take me.

Me!

Why could they not be here instead? Why could I not be the one to wet that thing’s maw and hunger?

Why not me!

Becoming a magicker was something I dreamt of. And now I don't want it. This all feels like a bad dream I'll eventually wake from. But, I know that it's not. I still can't accept it.

I can't accept something that makes their deaths real.

Eiden felt like he had sold the lives of his friends in exchange for magehood. Though he knew the sentiment was not true, he felt resentment in the power that ebbed and flowed beneath the surface of his being.

It had been sparked into being, he surmised with the instinctual and unspoken knowledge that came with the power. Streams of energy flowed beneath his skin like a secret system of underground rivers. The branching channels concentrated on his skin, dissipating outwards like clouds being birthed by the heavens.

He instinctively knew that if he were to rend his flesh from the bone, he would not “see” that flow of spirit. For it was invisible to mundane sight, layered in the same and yet different space.

Like the reflection of a mirror that could not be directly touched. Yet now, such power, such grasp over the reflection was in Eiden’s hands. Middling though it be, he had magick.

He had the power to bend that which was not bendable. To exert control over the world like never before. What exactly Eiden could do or how, he did not know. His implicit knowledge ended there.

He was cowled in spirit as were all others. All had this essence of will and mind that flowed around their forms like some sort of cloak or shroud. And along with this second and invisible skin, came emotions. These feelings bent and warped the fabric of being, yielding information and knowledge Eiden could not have known otherwise.

The pang of hunger, a dull trembling of the shroud.

The spark of anger, a writhing of the spirit like it had been set aflame.

The tired malaise wrought of a night of too much drink, the willborn skin slow and placid like stillwaters.

Eiden knew all these things from people he had never met before by simply feeling the hazy breath of their spirits. And if he could divine the moods and feelings of others, why could he not do the same for himself?

Eiden extended his awareness inwards and onto himself. The clouds of will that bled from his skin were grey and yet turbulent. Melancholic yet wrathbound. They were omens that heralded the arrival of the storm.

What is this stuff?

The Exorcist placed a hand on Eiden's shoulder, removing him from his ruminations. Looking up at Fin, Eiden realized he had forgotten to say something for a long time.

"Lisa teaches—taught me how to speak well enough and to read," Said Eiden. "She was... a merchant's daughter."

It felt wrong talking about Lisa's background. So much baggage came attached to it, even in death.

Remembering what happened made Eiden spiral into feelings he would have preferred to have never felt. It was like he was floating in the depths of the sea. Suspended and not in control of what direction he went.

As a reflection of the water, he was at the discretion of what made the reflection. Or was he? Eiden had awakened something deep inside of himself. A power that from all the folktales and stories could make the impossible not so.

That could bend natural law as easily as a tyke could bend a thin branch of deadwood.

Flashes from twisted dreams made their way to his present thoughts. Eiden looked at his hand, clenching and relaxing his fingers as he remembered the claws. And the blood. Eiden shuddered at the thought. Gods, so much blood. It looked so black and dark, but I knew it was blood. It was so... vibrant.

"Say, did you have any weird dreams?" Asked Fin.

"Huh?" Said Eiden with startlement, his eyes bulging and his heart thrumming like hammer upon steel. "Yeah. How'd you know? Do you know what they mean?"

Can the bastard read minds too? Eiden felt terrible for calling Fin a bastard. Even if it was inside his head. The man had saved him, and Eiden would be forever grateful for it.

"Soul-dreams." Answered Fin. "They tell you what your magic is and reveal important things. What you can do at the start, but not what you'll end up as. Sometimes the dreams come in short bursts. Other times it happens all at once. Some even get memories from their past lives.”

From mangy tunnel-rat tyke to coddled and honey-smeared sunchild, magicking was just a dream. It was an impossibility, its rarity like that of a gold-egg laying goose.

Power hoarded by the nobleborn. By those that dwelled in spires of stone.

After so many winters of yearning for even the barest crumbs of magicking, Eiden had the chance to finally and properly taste it. Knowing that events would turn out to end like this, would he still choose this? If Eiden knew what would happen, would he just let it play out and trade his friends for magick? It was a morbid curiosity, one that he wished to not indulge any longer, so his attention refocused onto his surroundings.

He and the Exorcist walked through the streets and buildings of Arvenpyre proper. It was beautiful. Arvenpyre was a town sculpted into cliffs that led to a bay. The land pinched the horizon at both sides, framing the sprawling morning sea of amber and orange. Seagulls flew in the distance, and boats were scattered along the waters like vegetables and meat in a stew.

A bittersweet feeling came over Eiden. After years of being condemned to the tunnels, he was finally able to see the outside like never before. This was a place he and his ilk were never allowed to be near. Even now, Eiden received disapproving looks from the people passing them by. The disdainful scowls changed in a snap when Fin caught them. The Exorcist gave them a look that could make them burst into flames. And probably could if he used magick.

Fin was dressed in expensive-looking, dark clothes with a sword on his hip. Nobody was about to stop them or else incur wrath from a walking machine of war or nobility, especially with the almost constant scowl left on Fin's face. It's like the man was born for a scowl. He looks like a pissed off badger-mole. I mean, badger-moles are always pissed, but this is just extraordinary.

As Eiden walked and observed the spirits of others, a trickling sort of dangerous curiosity washed over him.

What did the Exorcist’s spirit look like?

Eiden, having been nicked by a magickal blade without actually touching it, was doubly cautious this time when he reached out with his will. The skin of his spirit was furtive like a rat, scurrying apprehensively around Fin.

The air around the Exorcist was ebbing and flowing like the breath of a person. Yet, instead of the shroud of spirit being sleeping and primitive like some beast or unthinking animal, Fin’s was awoken.

It reached back, its surface as sharp and chilling as a blade at one’s throat. Eiden’s breath hitched in his throat.

"For someone who doesn't want to assume their magehood," Said Fin, startling Eiden. "You sure like practicing magick." Fin's voice was light, and his perpetual scowl was gone, replaced by a lopsided grin. The smile somehow brought him back a few decades in appearance.

"Huh," said Eiden, massaging his suddenly dry throat, "what do you mean?"

"Magick doesn't have to be physically visible to be magick, lad. It is the bending of the stuff of souls and of spirit. Of things unseen by mortal eyes. I'll explain what you did later." said Fin gesturing towards the lord's manor with his chin. "We're gonna talk to this town's lord and collect our bounty for the beast."

"What do you mean 'our' bounty? I didn't even put up a fight against that… thing." Eiden's voice turned scornful, angry, and disgusted at the same time. His eyes were wide in smoldering wrath, waiting in impatient frustration for the power to end all devils.

To slay them in vengeful wake. To make them pay a price paid in full. Something, in the thrumming core of Eiden’s heart, came alive then. Red lightning—scarlata incarnata, the stuff of volcanic eruptions—danced inside the mageling’s eyes.

The red fulgur poured from his spirit in a corruscating wave. The invisible cowling of will was no longer such, storm clouds sprouting from his skin.

Hatred unlike anything Eiden had ever felt before took root in his mind. Yet, for some reason, the emotion was familiar even without explicit memories to accompany it. The burning want and need to utterly destroy the target of his wrath was compulsory.

The emotions were blinding, dousing his sight in a sea of dull red.

And when his mind could no longer contain the smoldering pyre that dwelled within, it set free the devils of his heart. His fists were enshrouded in a coat of hissing blood-fire; its surface writhing and boiling like water yet in the shape of flame.

The fell creature that had murdered his kith and kin was no beast. It was a monster proper. Beasts killed their prey for they had no choice other than slaughter or death by starvation.

Monsters preyed on the innocent, on the weak that could not defend themselves. Theirs was a sin for it was borne of choice, and they chose to cause pain just to relish its acrid taste.

The creature had toyed with them like a cat would with a mouse. Perhaps, most frighteningly so, a monster and a beast weren’t so different at all.

The wrath reached a crescendo, its apex peak, right on the tip of the tongue that was Eiden’s spirit. All he had to do was let go.

Whispers, dark things from darker corners still, came in twain. Susurrations that dwelt in the black of the mind came to the fore and into the fold.

Surrender under the strain of rage, so that all may be drowned in ash and doused in blood. Rend flesh from bone and burn all asunder.

Eiden was shaken away from his blinding hatred when a firm hand was placed on his shoulder. The physical gesture was comforting as were the spiritual projections that came therein.

The Exorcist’s spirit was no longer a sharp edge, but instead a soft and protective pair of wings. They cowled Eiden in a shielden embrace that would sooner extinguish itself then let another suffer.

Within that shrouding of spirit and influence came compassion and warmth. The enduring will of selfless protection and self-sacrifice.

The mist that bled from the Exorcist’s form calmed Eiden's angry storm clouds, lulling them into tranquility. The scarlet flames that enshrouded his fists evaporated like fog under Solaria at Her height.

The whispers returned to the black from whence they came, waiting in frustration for another crevice to infest and climb higher.

As Eiden's anger ebbed, he felt both sharp and dull pain emanate from his hands. Both had white knuckles and were dripping blood. His nails, which he always kept sharp for defense, had dug into his flesh. Scarlet droplets turned foggy as they dropped into a murky puddle.

The skin of his hands were raw, like they had been scraped with sand paper and doused in boiling water. The blood inside them throbbed in the telltale rhythm of pain and inflammation.

Eiden caught a strange sight in the corner of his eyes. The black substance that permeated his dreams coated his finger-nails.

Memories, scar-flesh of the mind, came unbidden in flashes like the light that came after a pail of thunder.

Abyssal claws, pitch-black and wrought of iron dust.

Vibrant red and fumes of death.

Dry husks of skin and bone.

Piles of bloodied limbs and offal.

Eyes frozen in lifeless despair.

Sinister grins splitting faces in twain.

The smell of sulfur, thick in the air.

Rows of sawteeth and fang.

Leeches cloaked in the hide of the hare.

"You may have not actively participated in the fight." Said Fin with a somber yet unwavering voice. Steel was woven between the words, giving them the pliable yet durable quality of a suit of plate.

The Exorcist’s spirit dragged Eiden out of his past-bound fetters, releasing him from the flashes of haunting memory. He would not see another suffer if something could be done.

"Yet how could you? You weren't a mage proper, and the power you've awakened wasn't yet suitable for a fight. But, you're now an exorcist-in-training. You'll have the power to fight monsters. All I ask is patience. Not with me, but with yourself."

Fin gave Eiden a smile laden with commiseration and then clapped him on the back, startling the young exorcist from the sheer force and surprise of it.

"Now," said Fin, “let's get this done quickly. Afterwards, we'll break our fast, and then the training starts in earnest on the ‘morrow."

After considering something for a while, the thought being juggled between his brows, Fin continued.

"Oh, and don't reach out towards the noble with your spirit. It's considered bad form, and I don't have the time to teach you aura etiquette."

Fin looked at the manor and then at Eiden.

"Follow me, young exorcist."

Before Eiden followed Fin into the manor, he looked back at his nails. The claws were gone. He let out a breath he didn't know he was holding onto.