The Comfort Of The Knife

“Alls below, this is a problem caused by a spell, but we can’t use spells to fix it?” Lupe asked.

“Technically, Temple said that “the Sorcery of entities” is what’s off limits,” Amber stated.

“Which doesn’t leave us much in the way of solutions,” Melissa said. “Every spell is derived from entities, meaning all of it is theirs. We just borrow it. Besides, if you have a magic problem then you need a magic solution!”

After I’d informed them of the “hint” that Revelation Unmaking had given, they ran themselves into the same creative rut that I’d fallen into myself. Magic problems did require magic solutions, and most of those were hidden inside of spells. Case-in-point, without the Omensight I couldn’t look past the flames to see how my incendiary status had infected Amber, Melissa, and Lupe with no small amount of mania. Amber was pacing around us in a circle as if the answer hid behind one more left turn. Melissa’s anxiety was apparent in how she kept spinning her left hand like it was a dreidel. While Lupe had her back turned to me as she stared up into the sky—though with how her bracelet worked I knew she was still watching, she didn’t have a choice.

“Wait,” I groaned, immediately gaining everyone’s attention. “We can’t do Sorcery, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t sorcerous solutions available. Lupe, your bracelet isn’t a spell.”

Lupe said, “Sure, but it’s just mortal-tier…magic. Alls below, what you lack in emotional intelligence you must have pushed into sorcery, Nadia.”

“Temple, mortal tier magic gets us around the ban on entity Sorcery,” Amber said before she threw a stick between the spokes of our brainstorming, “but there’s too much energy here for a few spare phonemes to stop. It’s called, ‘mortal-tier’ for a reason—it won’t be strong enough.”

Melissa released her hand, speaking as it spun counterclockwise undoing her rotations. “Maybe not a handful of phonemes,” Melissa said, “but what if we use a lot of them? Circumvent strength by way of complexity. It’s how shrines and temples work.”

“Princess, we don’t have time to build a shrine let alone a temple,” Amber stated.

“Then we make a formation,” I said.

Amber asked, “What if we don’t have the right phonemes?”

Doubt trickled into Lupe’s voice as asked, “What if this is just a trick to make us waste time?”

“No, Revelation might speak obliquely or be confoundingly cryptic, but it doesn’t lie or trick. It wants you to learn,” I said. “If she gave me a hint then it means there is an answer, and likely one we’re capable of finding. These flames are of Revelation, so the answer has to be in my spells’ phonemes somewhere.”

“That’s a lot of faith you’re asking us to put into an entity, Temple,” Amber said.

She was right—Amber always had a frustrating capacity to be right. I wasn’t just asking them to risk my life on this gamble, but their own. My failure would take all of us with me. An outcome that spawned horrific images in my mind of their flesh melting from their bones before being removed from all existence—unmade alongside me. I shut my eyes, blocking off these false visions, and opened them again to find Amber meeting my gaze. Reading me for the first time in a while, searching for the glimpse of whatever made her follow me in the first place.

I didn’t have any hard evidence for her that everything would work out. All I had was the belief in the field of sorcerous knowledge that my dad gave his entire life to. That, in some other life, I would’ve given my all to. If all these entities wanted to force me down a path that’d mean parting from my humanity and the humans that made it worth living, then what better way to deny them than using the tools mankind had created ourselves?

“No,” I said, “I’m asking you to put your faith in me. I’ll need it way more than her.”

A smile broke across Amber’s face and warred with the fear that cast shadows in her eyes. She nodded in assent and settled in front of me. Melissa and Lupe, trusting in Amber’s decision, flanked her. The Angler Knight’s words—Sinaya’s, in truth, if he actually felt that way—dripped worry down my spine. I know I needed their help, these three, but was I really infecting them?

“Name me!” the flames roared, propelling me face down into the mud, and away from those more cerebral concerns. I almost wanted to thank them, but they—like those thoughts—were an enemy I had to overcome if everyone was going to survive.

“Okay, so how do we design a formation?” Melissa asked.

Lupe said, “The same way I built my bracelet. We isolate the problem, figure out what spells can best interact with it, and then bust them open for parts. Slap the whole thing together and run it.”

“The problem is obvious,” I said. “I’m on fire.”

Amber disagreed, “No, you’re on fire with—well—Revelatory fire. That’s the specific problem, so how does that work?”

“Um, it depends,” I said. “If my flames travel along fate—,”

“Sympathy lines,” Amber translated to Melissa and Lupe.

“Alls below, don’t be pedantic while I burn to death,” I groaned. “When they travel along them it moves through this tapestry of reality where everything’s Conceptual. Then when it touches you it burns you away for Real.”

“And the other way?” Lupe asked.

“I make fire and shoot it at someone usually. It destroys the Real thing, but then burns out into the tapestry removing every Conceptual line of sympathy that’d root you in the world.”

Melissa said, “So either your flames move from the Conceptual to affect the Real, or the Real to affect the Conceptual. Which are these?”

“I don’t—,” I began, before the flames consumed something and exploded.

Amber wrapped her arms around Melissa and Lupe, pulling them back in time before the chalcedony corona that coated me could consume them in its expansion. My vision—now sideways— revealed that I’d been pounded into a crater. Instinctually, I tried to push myself up into at least the groveling position I was in moments earlier, but I couldn’t. Which was when I realized what the flames had stolen from me—my right arm. Under the Omensight, I could still see it, the spiritual musculature remained, but the Real thing was gone.

I squirmed into the dirt and mud until I flopped on my back. The flames had settled into a—at least temporarily—stable pillar of fire. It was a clue at least. If what was lost was my Real arm, then providing this was like an Atomic Glory, it meant that whatever these flames were consuming was something Conceptual about me that led to my Real body.

This made for two clues, but I wanted answers. So there, with my eyes toward the heavens, I flexed my spirit to pull back my vision until I saw only fire again. Then, fixing my Omensight on the flames, I pushed inside of them to find the threads they were burning. They were thick, cold, reminiscent of Sleep, and heavy as a blanket. A cocoon. A memory.

* * *

First, there was a burning sensation. No smoke tickled my nose because there was no fire. It was just my muscles crying out for a reprieve. Though my cheeks were wet. Crying? I was crying. Then I stumbled, going end over end down a hill. Cuts ran down my legs and hands, bruises formed beneath my skin, but it all paled to the pain in my heart. I crawled forward until I found a puddle—my ten-year-old face stared back at me, followed by my mom’s peeking over my shoulder.

“Go away,” I screamed, whirling around in fear.

She said, “Not gonna happen, sweetie. I’d be a pretty bad mom if I just let you run away like this. A lot of people got together to help look for you.”

Her voice was jokey as she spoke. Trying whatever she could to help me calm down, but I was ten and didn’t want to calm down.

“You’re already a bad mom!”

“And why’s that?” she asked, her smile faltering.

I explained, “You don’t believe me.”

“I always believe you.”

“Nuh-uh,” I whined. “You yelled at me. Said I was lying when I told our guest about my trips downstairs, the pretty-glowing lady, and even my sister.”

My mom’s smile fell to pieces. Reached out to me with both her hands to pull me into a hug. I slapped them away, scurrying out of her reach.

“Nadia, sweetie, those were just nightmares. You have a very active imagination, hon, who knows maybe you’ll bond to Imagination when you’re older,” she said. “However, it’s important to separate truth from fiction, like saying you have a sister when you don’t.”

“I do,” I protested.

“Nadia, you don’t. You’re my one and only child. I counted when I pushed you out.”

“Then maybe you counted wrong,” I argued. “I do have a sister, and I’m not lying!”

“Sweetie, it’s for your own good—.”

“No!” I yelled. “It’s just what you want because you hate me. Saying I’m lying when I’m. Not. Lying!”

I pounded my foot into the forest floor, punctuating my declaration of truth, and for a brief moment…

One was two.

It was stuttery, unstable, and when I snapped back together it released a wave not dissimilar from the Horizon Severs Sea From Sky. Though it was hardly as strong as Tsumugi’s, leaving only deep gouges in the trees, the ground, and even the falling leaves.

“Alls below, you’re sheltering it,” a different voice said.

Mom whipped her head to the side tracking the voice. It belonged to our guest, an older man in an unadorned duck cloth jacket. On his back was a sarcophagus that he slung off his back before letting it drop to the ground in a thud. Mom slid in front of me—at the time I didn’t realize that unlike everything else around me, she was pristine and unblemished.

“She’s a little girl,” Mom said.

The man said, “‘Little girls’ don’t cast magic just by throwing a tantrum. You know what does?”

Mom argued, “Please, we’re raising her right. She hasn’t hurt anyone—.”

“Yet,” he said. “What if she threw a tantrum at school? Cut those children to pieces?”

“I’d fix it,” Mom said.

“You can’t watch her forever,” he said. “Sovereign, in the name of the Tenken-bumon—.”

“Sweetie,” Mom said to me, “close your eyes for me.”

“Mommy, what’s going on?” I asked.

“Just, close them,” she said, using that motherly tone which meant her patience was spent.

I closed them, and felt myself—my proper eighteen-year-old self—disconnect from the memory before falling into a different one.

* * *

My stomach hurt, but my tongue was pleased. I wiggled it about in glee that it was blue. Looked up into the face of Melissa—ten-year-old Melissa—to see that hers was green. In our fists were cones that held aloft half-eaten clouds of cotton candy. Around us were stalls with games, treats, and little market goods present at every Declaration of Thunder festival. Which meant it was also my birthday.

Trailing just a bit behind Melissa and myself, was my mom and dad, as well as a different guest. One they’d said was a friend. She wore a shawl around her shoulders, had deep bags beneath her eyes, and a mouth prone to yawning.

“It’ll be tough,” she said, yawning again. “Sleeping Beauty shit—.”

“Language,” my mom hissed, noting that I’d turned my ear toward them. “And you, don’t eavesdrop on adults talking. It’s rude.”

“Yes, Mooooom,” I said, dragging out my agreement.

Melissa grabbed my hand. “C’mon, let's go to my family’s cloth dyeing station. It’ll be fun.”

I let Melissa pull me away from my parents. Though not before I caught a few more words.

The sleepy lady said, “It’ll come undone eventually. This magic always does.”

“How long would it last?” Mom asked.

“Depends,” she said. “If you convince her that she wants this, maybe make her forget it’s there altogether, it could coast along quietly for a good while.”

“Years?” Dad asked.

“You’ll at least get eight. After that, depends on what Court she bonds to.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, “she won’t. Not while I’m around.”

Then I was beyond their words, and let myself disconnect from this memory as well.

* * *

Up burning strands of memory, my consciousness climbed back toward my body. Ascending beyond skinned knees, sore throats, stuffy noses, the sun on my skin, juice in my mouth, fingers in my hair, and more. The sensory anchors to memories that spanned the life I thought I knew.

Echoing about was my mom’s voice reminding me, “This is what it meant to be human.”

To feel and experience the world through the body, and through the body make memory. Through memory build one’s self. A self established in the tapestry of the world—Nadia Temple, human girl. Whose fate would’ve been—should’ve been—mundane across the infinite fractal paths of possibility. It was an ingenious work of magic, and I’d set fire to it all to win a fight I could’ve just walked away from.

With a sigh, I settled into my body again. Turned my Omensight away from the fire, and back to just beyond it where I saw Amber, Lupe, and Melissa peeking past the rim of my crater. I would’ve never walked away from that fight for all the reasons I’d told Sinaya—The Angler Knight. It wasn’t in me, but what really was me?

“Which is it?” Melissa asked, her voice trying to climb above the endless rumble of fire.

I yelled back, “Conceptual to Real. It’s consuming my fate, and leading down to my body.”

Lupe said, “Problem isolated, now we go over your spells.”

“That’s easy, I only have four,” I said.

“Still?” the three of them asked.

“Yes, still, alls below it’s not about how many spells you have,” I yelled.

Amber said, “You’re right, now just tell us about your spells.”

“And make sure to incant them,” Lupe added. “That way we can pick apart the phonemes, since we’ll be drawing the formation.”

“Atomic Glory gathers possibility then splits it to unleash Revelatory fire. Inviolate Star makes a dense star of power that diverts fate and scatters Sorcery. Omensight is just my sorcerous sight. While, Godtime…well, that one’s kind of weird. It isolates a moment for someone, so I can do more in a small amount of time than I normally should. Varies between a time stop or slow depending on who I take with me. Any of that help?”

“It does,” Amber yelled. “Way I see it, we use the portion of Atomic Glory that lets you gather fate—focus it on the stuff that’s being burned right now—to collect the fire.”

Lupe chimed in, “Then pull the part of Inviolate Star that condenses energy so we compress it down into a shape and it doesn’t just shoot off somewhere.”

“Using the parts of Godtime that isolate, we shove all that energy inside,” Melissa finished. “That should solve everything.”

Another strand gave way within me. The pillar of flame bulged, expanding again and making a pit of my crater. The earthen walls became tall enough that I couldn’t even see everyone’s faces anymore. Just their voices, garbled at the edge by the static of my bonfire body.

“It doesn’t,” I yelled. “Whatever happens in Godtime can still affect the Real. It just keeps the Real from necessarily being able to affect what goes on inside of it. Isolating the moment isn’t enough.”

Lupe yelled, “I’m open to any suggestions.”

“We need it to be more complex,” I said. “Mortal-tier magic can pull from more than one Court, and right here I count at least three other ones. Melissa, do you have a phoneme within Mutation that can twist something to do a semi-inverted function?

“Yeah, why?” she asked.

“We can’t just isolate the moment,” I said. “We make it into one where it’s a full-on trap; one way in with no way out. That way nothing happening inside can still affect what’s outside. While Lupe, do you have a phoneme somewhere in Morning that can punt something into the future?”

“Alls below, of course I do. The dawn is always ahead of us,” she said, “but it comes in the next day. We need this to last long past the next day.”

“Amber, do you have something?” I asked.

Silence. My heart teetered as it stretched beyond the amount of time normally needed for simple recollection. Did she not know something—I was used to her knowing everything.

“I do,” she said, like it was a confession. “A few phonemes of Masks would do it. So rather than be bound by a specific near time, we set it in a future that’ll be marked by a cue signal.”

Anxiety fled my body as I exhaled, and nodded to myself. This would do it. This would work—it had to work. So, with the plan set, all I could do was wait. Buried in a pit, on fire, and slowly losing feeling in the remains of myself that were still mortal—my head, my internal organs, my feet. Though, in a manner that didn’t quite hurt, I knew the flames were consuming them too from the outside in. Flesh sloughing until the metallic scales of my musculature peeked through.

I shut my eyes—as if that would block out the awareness of my body being stripped away. Then, when my legs were down to bones, I heard a whooshing. Though it was more like a sucking vacuum sort of whoosh. Alongside the sound, came a relieving of pressure that left me feeling lighter than air. As if a wind could ferry me from my tellurian pit. I opened my eyes, blinked off the Omensight, and would’ve cried if the transition between my sorcerous sight and normal vision didn’t already spawn tears.

The flames had been pulled into a retreat, and with it the chalcedony curtain of fire was withdrawn. Amber, Melissa, and Lupe poked their heads past the edge of the pit—the flames deep enough in their remission for it to be safe—and there, framed by the stars, they looked more beautiful than they ever had. We were all battered, bruised, and beaten, but alive.

I crossed my eyes noting the finger-wide beam of chalcedony that still cut up into the air. It terminated at a point between my eyes—my temple. As I watched its energy slowly dissipate and flicker, I heard its request in a voice, whisper-thin and mournful.

“Please, just name me,” it asked.

I whispered back, “Maybe one day.”

The beam disappeared, and my demise, delayed.

Amber opened her storage-spell, and let a step-ladder drop. Its end clattered against some root hidden in the dirt. Engaging my core, I forced myself to sit up only to fight against two weights at my side—my arms! They were back…and as I stared at them, realized how different they were. Scales coated them in thick bands that became smaller as you followed them down to my fingers. Which had also changed. My nails weren’t manicured down to a soft unsharp arc anymore, but instead extended into metal claws meant to carve through flesh.

Lupe yelled, “Stop staring at yourself, and get up here!”

I chuckled and used my arms—changed as they were—to push myself to my feet. Climbed up the ladder, hopping off once I’d cleared the edge of the pit, and fell into Amber and Melissa’s embrace. When I’d returned from battling The Angler Knight, they hadn’t hugged me. After dismissing the transformation, Amber had burned just trying to touch me. Now though, there was nothing about me that scared them off or hurt them for attempting to grant me intimacy.

“Lupe, you want in on the hug?” I asked.

She laughed, “I gave you a hug already.”

“Yeah, but that was a victory hug,” I said. “This is a, ‘Alls below, I can’t believe you survived,’ hug. Totally different.”

“To be honest,” she said, “I’m surprised any of us did.”

“Then we all deserve a hug,” Amber teased.

“Alls below, we do,” Melissa agreed.

As a combined force, Amber, Melissa, and myself ambled after Lupe to pull her into the hug. Lupe laughed at the effort, said we looked, “Actually horrific,” as our silhouettes had all merged together. Then marched directly toward us, joining in.

My eyes fell closed in tranquil appreciation. Though in my ear, I heard Revelation Unmaking’s voice.

“Nadia, when our arms are full is when we’re most likely to drop everything,” she stated.

I did my best to focus on the moment, but her words were in me now. Settled right next to her implication that I was still on the beleaguered path, whatever that was. The two pieces of information rolled around in my head until I couldn’t fixate on them anymore; my full attention being stolen by a large projection of our proctor’s face appearing in the air above us.

The Kennelmaster said, “That’s time. All of you slain or captured, take heart that you’ve been judged fairly according to your deeds, both official and unofficial for some of you. We’ll be pulling you out exactly as we dropped you in, so wait patiently while we extract you.”

Once he was done, the projection disappeared. All that remained was more waiting. Across the island, people were being teleported out in an order that still wasn’t clear to me. Was it by severity of wounds, score, who still had a Dream Shell or didn’t? Ultimately, I didn’t know, but I did end up watching Melissa and Lupe be teleported out before me and Amber.

“So,” I said.

“Hmm?” she hummed.

I asked, “What’s my cue signal?”

“Ah,” Amber groaned, “the answer. The fire wanted you to name it, so I made the signal be its name.”

“You know what its name is?” I asked.

Amber scoffed, “As if. Temple, Masks doesn’t have to know—not at least to the demands of facts. It’s more about feeling.”

“When I feel that I’ve named it, it’ll go off,” I said. “Hardly accurate.”

She kicked up a small clump of dirt my way. “Hey, we had to cobble together a formation on the fly. Cut us some slack.”

“Oh, for Melissa and Lupe, totally,” I said. “But you know everything, so I expected more.”

My voice was mocking but light.

“I know it wasn’t easy,” I said.

“What wasn’t?”

“Telling us what your Court was.”

“Who says, Masks is my Court?” she asked.

“Really,” I asked, “you’re going to deny it?”

“I only want to hear the evidence.”

I counted it off. “First, there’s the fact that you and Wren both do that weird disappearing move the exact same way, and she was Masks. Second, you did basically put a “Mask” over the control tablet to make it look like a knife. Third, it was in the scroll.”

“What?” she asked, her voice cold.

Smirking, I said, “Yeah, Amber, you were my target for this entire exam. Right inside the scroll, it said, ‘Amber Scorizni, Court of Masks.’”

“Fuck,” she whispered. “I thought I’d hidden it better than—.”

“Gotcha.”

She looked up, glaring. “What?”

“I. Got. You,” I said. “My actual third piece of evidence, your confession.”

She was quiet for a moment, then chuckled. Which became a laugh. That soon shook her entire body in a rolling guffaw. I laughed alongside her.

Amber said, “I can’t believe you actually convinced me.”

I stood and walked over to where Amber leaned against the tree. It was broad enough for me to lean against it also. There, so close that I felt her breath on my lips, I stared into her rose eyes.

“It helps that I mixed in some of the truth,” I said. “You really were my target, but they had nothing on you. Why’s that?”

“You’re getting greedy, Temple,” she replied. “One secret at a time, don’t you think?”

“Fine,” I said softly, then leaned in closer so my lips barely grazed hers with every word. “Want to know how else, I tricked you?”

“Tell me.”

I pressed my lips against hers. I had to stand on my tiptoes—if I could’ve kept my humanity and the extra inches from that strange form from earlier, I would have gladly. When I pulled back, I answered Amber’s demand.

“You told me,” I said, “no one’s paranoid when they’re in love.”

Her lips quivered into a smile, but before she could kiss me back, I was teleported out.

* * *

The next day, I skipped out on breakfast. I’d woken up earlier than Amber and Melissa. Under normal circumstances, that would’ve been fine. When we were extracted from the island, the secretaries informed everyone that there’d be a day-long gap between the second test and the first. Time meant to recuperate, do some light training, or seriously consider dropping out. For me, it just meant that I stared up into the ceiling and kept seeing Sinaya’s face in the plaster. His eyes wide, patient, and so sad as he bemoaned the fact I hadn’t killed him. When I wasn’t haunted by that, the sound of the cooling shrine at work reminded me too much of the flame’s demand that I, ‘name it.’

It made my room unbearable. So, working carefully, I squirmed free of the cuddle puddle that I’d fallen into with Amber and Melissa. Snuck over to my bag where I grabbed a few clothes, threw them on, and slipped out the door. I hadn’t left them a note—I should have, but…some thoughts you just have to think through alone.

A process that led me out of the residence hall, into the crisp morning breeze, and out onto the streets of the district. Where I walked, and walked trying to think without thinking. Not about Sinaya, my status as something more—or less—than human, or what my parents did to me. Instead, there was just the steady blur of businesses and people beginning their day. A mundanity that under other conditions would’ve been mine—nope, no I didn’t want to think through that. I shoved my claws deeper into my pockets. Walked harder. Down streets, around corners, up hills, all the way until I found myself at the end of it all.

I was across the street from a house, two floors, pretty big like the ones near it. This one was the end of the street, the district, land—it sat overlooking a cliff after all. It was the house that I’d first seen as a ruin. Where I’d encountered the White Womb, that twisted sibling—if they counted as such—of mine. The first fight I’d had with Sinaya, though at that time we were allies. I’d watched a mom die in that house. My feet led me to the encapsulation of everything I didn’t want to think about. So I did the only thing left. I crossed the street.

A sign hanging in the window said that it was available for purchase—part of me wondered how much it cost, but a different area of myself considered the fact that after killing Nemesis I’d probably have to run. It wasn’t really like I wanted a house anyways. Just a home.

I tried the doorknob. Locked. Rolling my eyes, I blinked on the Omensight and found the thread of fate tying the lock to a key hidden inside the mailbox beside the door. Fishing out the key, I pushed it in and entered the house.

It creaked in squeaky joy at an occupant crossing its floors. The house didn’t care about what I was—houses were good like that, non-judgemental. Past the entryway, I crossed through the kitchen and into the living room. The walls, I discovered when not coated in gore or ash, were a light oceanic blue. There wasn’t any furniture to sit down on, so I passed from there to the deck out back which hung past the cliff’s edge.

The glass door slid aside easily enough, and then I was outside again. Ocean breeze teasing my nose with brine and salt. As well as a chill that wasn’t likely to leave even when the sun climbed past the horizon.

I rested my arms along the wooden railing, and whispered, “Sphinx, we need to talk.”

My spirit shifted, parting like curtains, and then there was Sphinx, sitting on her haunches beside me. Her smile was wan, but there was no disagreement in her expression.

“Of course, Nadia,” she said. “What about?”