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“Do you have magic?”
She sits, settling herself upon a stool at the counter, blue eyes bright and clear. At her question, silence falls in the pub.
The bartender eyes her curiously. “Magic?” He asks.
She nods. “It used to be here, or so I’ve heard,” she tells him. “I’ve been looking for it. Do you have any?”
“It was banned from this country a long time ago,” the bartender says, turning away briskly to pour another drink and slide it down the counter.
“It was?” She frowns at him. “I saw a man with it the other day.”
At her words, the bartender freezes. He turns, stiffly, slowly, to stare at her. “Who?” He asks hoarsely.
“I don’t know,” she says honestly. “I’m not from around here.”
“If you see him again,” the bartender advises her, “run.”
He turns away again, blond hair bouncing as he firmly sets his back to her and speaks with the dark-haired girl working behind the counter with him.
Zoey picks up her drink and wanders further back into the pub, to where a few armchairs sit squashed in the corner around a low, battered wooden table. She sinks into one and sighs in relief.
Maybe she could spend the night here - but, with the way the girl and the bartender cast wary glances over at the corner where she’s sitting, it’s more likely than not she’ll be refused. It won’t be the first time either. She’s been turned down so often she’s not sure she can count the number of times anymore.
How difficult is it to find a sip of magic? Just a tiny sip of it, so she can go home and rest and be at peace.
Home. Zoey wishes she could go home already. She wishes she had a home to go back to - but, like so many others, the memories of home are gone. All she has left is a name and a desperate, wild fear of the dark.
That’s what she wants magic for. Not for frightening power, not to become strong and brave and wise, but to be able to fight back the darkness she feels all around her.
The dark-haired girl sinks into the chair opposite her. She smiles at Zoey nervously, and it takes all of Zoey’s energy to just smile back.
“How long are you planning to stay?” She asks timidly, glancing over her shoulder at the bartender. He watches her vigilantly out of the corner of his eye.
Zoey sighs, and takes a sip of her drink. The coffee’s bitter, like it is everywhere else, and she closes one eye as she regards the girl.
“What’s your name?” She asks, opening her eye and leaning forward.
“Nano,” the girl says, and then tenses up defensively. “Why?”
“I was hoping to stay until morning,” Zoey tells her, and doesn’t miss the flicker of worry, “but I can see that you and your friend don’t want me here.”
Nano gets halfway to protesting weakly before Zoey silences her with a small smile. “It’s fine, really,” she tells Nano, “I’m used to it. I’ll finish my drink, and go.”
“Why do you want magic?” The question bursts from Nano before she can stop herself, and the bartender glances over sharply, worry etched into every line of his face. He starts towards them, one hand resting on something hidden just beneath the edge of his tunic.
Zoey smiles at Nano, genuine this time. “I’m used to hearing that, too.” She gulps down the rest of her coffee, and says quietly, “I’m scared.”
Nano opens her mouth to say something, but the bartender reaches them and hisses something in her ear before she can get the words out. The girl closes her mouth and returns to the bar, defeated.
The bartender glares at her. “You should probably go,” he tells her coldly.
Zoey nods once, in agreement. “Probably,” she says, clambering out of the sunken depths of her chair.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” she tells him, and goes.
“Why do you want magic?” He asks her, regarding her with wide red eyes and a wide red-stained grin, and Zoey’s aware of the bloody dagger lying in his lap.
“Why do you want magic?” She questions, her blue eyes gentle, an owl perched upon her shoulder, and Zoey feels like she’s been on this search herself.
“Why do you want magic?” They demand, blue eyes dangerous and cunning, and they make her think of a fox and damp stone and all too suddenly Zoey’s afraid that they might know why.
“Why do you want magic?” He inquires, and Zoey’s not sure why she remembers him, surely he was a dream - his horns, his antlers, the static in the air and his gentle tones and three blue eyes.
Zoey settles down to sleep not far from the small town - the only other place to stay refused her, and she’s used to sleeping on the ground anyway. The grass here is soft, and it’s not the worst place she’s had to sleep.
“Why do you want magic?” A thousand voices ask the question, a thousand different people who grew curious and asked her the question. There are a thousand different inflictions, a thousand different meanings - threats, fears, questions, greed and pain and curiosity all wrapped up in the expressions and voices and eyes of a thousand different people.
Zoey blinks away her half-asleep daze and forces off the memories, the times before, and doesn’t bother to raise even a shred of hope as she sits up and looks for the source of the voice.
“Over here,” a man’s voice calls, and she whips around, leaping to her feet in an instant.
“Who are you?” She asks, but as soon as the question leaves her mouth she knows the answer.
He doesn’t tell her anyway. He is dark, he is shadow and fear and Zoey is terrified of the darkness, but she’s paralyzed, she can’t run away because it’s so dark that it simply can’t be natural.
“You know, don’t you?” He says instead.
“Yes,” she says breathlessly. “Can you give any to me?”
“I have none,” he tells her with a shake of his head.
He says that but Zoey knows, she can feel it - or maybe she’s imagining it because she so badly wants it to be true, but the shadows around him are too deep to be mistaken.
“How did you get yours?” She bends down to pick up her backpack and her coat. He watches her as she does, his gaze almost glowing purple with how bright his eyes are in the darkness.
“I made it,” he answers, and she can hear the accent he has. It’s foreign; a land she hasn’t been to yet. If he has nothing to give her, she will go there, see if they know of him, see if they know his secrets.
“How?” This is the closest Zoey has ever gotten to magic, the closest she has ever been to gaining its power. “Please, can you make me some?”
“The price is too steep,” he tells her, and her heart plummets.
“Please, I’ll pay,” she begs, “I don’t care how much it is. I need some magic.”
He scowls. There are scars around his mouth - scars that run deep into his jaw, carved there with claws that left glow-in-the-dark purple marks all down his lips.
She recoils in fear and falls when something stirs in the darkness behind him, and he turns to lunge at it before she can scream. It shrieks static at him, and its jaw is too wide, and its claws are sharp enough to carve gouges into his skin, and it screeches, and shadows follow its movements like smoke, and it’s all Zoey can do to not scream as he drags it out of the shadow into the weak moonlight.
It has no consistent form, nothing Zoey can see in the half-light, and that just makes it worse. The man holds it still only long enough so Zoey can look at it, and then he plunges a too-slender hand into its throat and rips a small green stone from its throat.
He stands there as it disappears, and purple blood drips from his fingers, turning to dark smoke as the drops hit the ground.
“That is the price,” he tells her, and drops the stone at her feet.
Zoey sits there in stunned silence as he turns and descends into the shadow, disappearing in a crackle of noise and a glitchy patch of light.
“Who are you?” She asks, but instead of answering, the man rises. His dagger is sharp, digging into his own palm, and she’s afraid of the bloodlust in his eyes; if this is the price, Zoey doesn’t want to pay.
“Who are you?” She asks, but the woman smiles gently. She reminds Zoey of forests, of downy feathers and warmth, and her eyes are so soothing that she just wants to sink down and sleep.
“Who are you?” She asks, but they only grin. Their teeth are sharp, their gaze is sharp, their touch is sharp and painful and scary and she tears away and runs for her life.
“Who are you?” She asks, but the broad man turns away. He smells like rain and thunder, he feels like dry lightning and wool, and she forgets him almost as soon as he leaves.
“You’re still here?” It is the bartender who announces her entrance the next evening.
She smiles wearily at him. She spent the day searching for him, but she couldn’t find him anywhere. “Yeah, still here,” she says, and orders a drink and food for herself.
Nano brings it to her in the corner with the sunken chairs, and Zoey offers her a smile. Nano smiles back, less scared than the night before, and sits.
“You saw him?” She asks quietly, so the bartender can’t hear.
Instead of answering, Zoey looks pointedly towards the blond at the counter. He stares back levelly, and Zoey smiles at him and returns to her food.
“Hey,” Nano says, “He’s not bad. He’s just protective, is all.”
“What’s his name?” Zoey asks her.
“Lalna?” Her face scrunches up in confusion.
“Him,” Zoey says, and Nano’s expression melts into understanding.
“Rythian,” Nano replies softly. “We don’t know where he lives. Those shadow - things of his attack villagers sometimes. He fights them off and leaves again.”
Zoey sighs. Of course, it couldn’t be that easy, could it? “He made his magic, right?”
“Yes and no,” Nano says, glancing sideways at Lalna. He’s busy, laughing and pouring drinks into iron mugs. “He gave himself certain powers - the shadow things are monsters that manifested to counteract his strength. It happens often, to counteract new magics.”
Zoey pulls a small bundle of cloth from her bag. She lets it unravel, until a small stone falls from the rags and clinks on the wooden table.
Nano’s breath catches in her throat, and she draws back. “He collects those,” she says, her voice small. “He never tells us for what. We only know that they’re dangerous. We must never drop them or throw them, he says.”
“We?” Zoey picks it up gently, and rewraps it. Nano doesn’t respond until it’s tucked safely out of sight in Zoey’s bag.
“The villagers,” Nano replies. “He moved in a long time ago. He told us he’d be staying here, and he warned us about all the dangers he’d bring with him, and then he went away again, back to whatever cave he’s made his home in.”
“Cave?” Zoey’s eyes light up, and she gulps down the rest of her drink, pulling her bag closer. She doesn’t mind searching all through the night.
“I think so,” Nano says, and her voice drops so Lalna can’t hear. “He smelled like earth and stone, when I got attacked and he saved me.”
“Are there caves around here?” Zoey sets her mug down on the table and gets to her feet.
“East,” Nano says quietly, and rises from her seat. “You’d better go,” she says, louder, and Zoey’s surprised by the edge in her voice.
“You could’ve phrased it nicer,” Zoey mutters, and smiles at Nano before turning away and heading for the door.
“You’d better go,” he announces, and his voice is cold. His green eyes are narrowed, and Zoey can just make out the way his hand dips out of sight, clutching at an unseen weapon.
“You’d better go,” he says, and the lilt of his accent makes his voice friendly. His eyes are wide and innocent behind thick glasses, and Zoey can sense something feline about him.
“You’d better go,” a voice hisses from the darkness. It takes all of Zoey’s willpower to not look, and she turns and runs, bags bouncing against her limbs as she flees in the night.
“You’d better go,” she tells her, and her voice is soft and gentle, nothing like his stormy presence. Where he is power, she is kindness; though he is not cruel, she is human in a way he has lost.
It’s almost dawn when Zoey gives up - if anything, the sunlight struggling through the pre-dawn haze is what convinces her to rest.
She clambers up the branches of a tree with the ease of long practice, and secures herself in place with a length of soft rope. She can sleep here. It’s safer than the ground, and even if she loses her balance, she has faith in the knots sailors taught her so long ago.
Content enough with her perch, Zoey sinks into sleep. It’s easier to sleep now than it is at night; now, with sunlight poking through the trees, she feels safe and protected, knowing no shadows can attack her in the light.
As she drifts into the easy emptiness of sleep, she becomes aware of something moving about. It is a bird, no doubt; or maybe even a hunting vixen, at this time of year.
The thin, screeching voice of static reaches her, and she’s jolted from her sleep all too suddenly.
A shadow lurks beneath her tree, baring teeth that gleam even in the darkness that pools around the creature like a second shadow.
Zoey glances at the sky, but the sunlight is gone; the sky is a dense gray fog, sunlight and stars and moon hidden in whatever haze of horror this creature drags around after it.
It reaches for her and surely its arms weren’t this long, and it reaches her and she shrieks and pitches sideways. The knots catch her and hold her upside down, her back to the branch.
Zoey flails and screams and the darkness is here, it’s reaching for her face, its claws will tear out her eyes and she’ll be left in the dark, please don’t leave her, please don’t leave me, I’ll do anything -
And by some wild luck, the knots come free and Zoey tumbles to the ground and tears herself away from the smoke and the shadow, but she feels its claws catch on her arm and rip through her skin. She doesn’t care, she barely feels the pain, she has to get away.
Like a miracle, he appears even as she runs, and he grabs the monster by the wisps of its arms and forces it back, grappling with it for an advantage.
Zoey doesn’t stop to watch him kill it, doesn’t stop to thank him or tend to the gouge in her arm, she runs and runs and only stops when all she can hear is her own heartbeat, and her own desperate breath, and even then she doesn’t stop until she’s climbed as high up a tree as she can.
And then, finally, her terror begins to recede. She tries to catch her breath, fails, and tries again. It takes a long time - Rythian has found her by then, he’s standing under her tree - but eventually she manages it.
The purple blood on his hands and the scars around his mouth slowly remind Zoey of the jagged gash in her arm. She climbs down gently, inelegantly, to stand shakily before him and wait for him to speak.
“Are you alright?” His voice is gentle now, his accent warm and soft.
Zoey manages a nod. “My arm,” she says faintly, and then all of his attention is focused upon the wound.
“Let us go retrieve your things,” Rythian tells her, and strides off in the direction they came from.
Zoey trails meekly after him, not even protesting when he slings her backpack over his shoulder and gathers the tangled mess of rope still caught on the branches.
“You may stay with me until you are healed, and then you must go.” Rythian’s voice is stern, leaving little room for argument.
Zoey nods again. He leads her through the trees, to where she can just barely make out a path trampled in the fallen leaves. They come to an old quarry, filled with water, and stop on a cliff overlooking it.
“This way,” he says, and Zoey finally sees the rough stairs that lead downward.
The stairs go halfway down the cliff face before Zoey finds herself in the mouth of a yawning cavern. The walls are of black stone, and she notices immediately the scent of candles and smoke.
“It’s beautiful,” she tells him when he leads her further inside, to where purple banners cover smooth black walls, and marble carvings decorate the blank space, inset in the basalt stone. Candles of purples and pinks and grays light the way, giving life to the dark cave.
He smiles, and Zoey notices that this isn’t a natural cave. The walls are too smooth and polished, and the ground is too even to be anything but man-made.
Rythian notices her curious gaze towards the even corners and smooth curves, and says shortly, “Magic.”
That answers more questions than she’d care to admit.
He leads her off to the side, to where red stone frames a doorway. The inside of the room is nothing like the hallway; it’s illuminated by floating lights, and the floor is made of white wood with pale blue walls.
Rythian steers Zoey onto a low table and makes her sit before turning to a cabinet. Over his shoulder Zoey can see bottles and bandages; does he have an entire room to care for the injured?
“Does this happen often?” She asks him.
He winces, and she catches sight of too-sharp teeth in his grimace. “Too often,” he says, and pulls a length of pale purple bandage from the back of the cabinet.
“Will I have scars?” She asks him. She could see none on any of the villagers, but with how distinct his are, they may have just been covered.
“Yes,” Rythian tells her. “This type of bandage is the only thing to heal that cut, but it does so by forming a scar.”
Zoey offers him the gash silently. She’s been hurt enough before to pretend that he’s not hurting her more as he wraps her arm.
When Rythian steps back, the roll of cloth glows the same color as his scars. Zoey can’t help but reach up to touch them, to run her fingers over his lips and feel the grooves carved into his skin.
He coughs, and she yanks her hands back. “Sorry,” she says instinctively, but he just shakes his head.
“It’s fine,” he tells her, “I’m used to it.”
There is such resignation there that it makes Zoey feel guilty; she knows that tone, she uses it so often. It’s the tone that means It’s not okay but it happens often enough that I don’t bother protesting anymore. She wants to argue, say she didn’t mean to - but she did, she wanted to know, and even she won’t lie about that.
Rythian turns away, a hand tugging at the pale streak in his hair. “Come on,” he tells her, “I’ll show you to your room.
Zoey picks up her bag, pulling it over her good shoulder. She stuffs the coiled rope into it and follows him back to the black hallway.
This time the room is at the very end of the corridor, with such a small, set-aside door that Zoey immediately knows that this room is rarely used.
Rythian pushes open the metal door, and as Zoey steps inside, she can feel the heavy wards that swarm the room. It must be unbearable for someone with magic.
She turns to look as Rythian. He hasn’t entered the room, and he seems reluctant to; honestly, she’s not surprised.
“This is the only bedroom I have,” he tells her from the doorway. “I warded it to keep the shadows out, but it makes it smothering for me too. I never use it, but you’ll be safe here, and the wards shouldn’t bother you as much.”
“Rythian,” she says, as he turns to go, “thank you,”
He offers her only the briefest of smiles before closing the door.
“It’s fine,” he says, “I’m used to it.” Zoey doesn’t understand how anyone could get used to the sting of metal cutting through their skin, and she desperately hopes she’ll never have to - she promises herself she’ll never have to.
“It’s fine,” she says, “I’m used to it.” She doesn’t tell Zoey about the scars that criss-cross her back or the way her companion runs from dogs and can’t go too far from her, all because of the magic she so desperately sought.
“It’s fine,” they say, “I’m used to it.” The way they cough up blood makes their words anything but assuring; their body bends in ways that shouldn’t be possible, and Zoey wants to cry at their pain because they won’t.
“It’s fine,” he says, “I’m used to it.” The rain that falls around them hisses and evaporates as it touches him, and he smells of smoke and singed hair. He shouldn’t be alive after being hit by lightning, but it’s happened so often he doesn’t bother wondering why.
Zoey wakes to silence.
She’s gotten used to it. It’s been three days since Rythian led her here, since she was attacked. She has yet to see him.
Zoey rises from her bed, folds the sheets neatly back into place, and reaches down to grab a change of clothes from her bag. Though the closet is filled with Rythian’s dark clothes, the drawers here are empty. She hasn’t put anything in them, not wanting to settle down.
She makes the bed after she sleeps, cleans the dishes after she eats, washes her clothes after every day. If she pretends she’s not here, it’ll be easier to leave when she’s healed.
The gash in her arm has barely changed at all. The edges are a pale purple, but the wound isn’t healing itself at all. The blood’s stopped, at least. She’s also discovered that her bandage is watertight, much to her relief.
Zoey changes quickly and leaves yesterday’s clothes in a neat pile on the floor, so she can clean them later. She wanders towards the kitchen, driven by the sound of her stomach.
She started exploring when she woke up a few days ago. There are only two rooms she hasn’t been able to get into; both are locked, and the doors are seamless stone panels with no handles.
Zoey grabs an apple from the basket by the door and a glass of water. She’s gotten into the habit of eating a light breakfast, reading for little, and then going for a swim in the quarry.
She forces the thought out of her head. She doesn’t have habits. Every day is a different place, a different challenge. Zoey is not allowed to form habits.
Today, though, she might swim and then read. Or maybe she could go into town, and talk to Nano.
Zoey is pulled from her thoughts as she notices that one of the locked doors is open. Where there had always been smooth black stone, there is an entryway into darkness.
She steps inside. “Rythian?” She calls, and at the sound of her voice, the room lights up.
He’s asleep on a table, one side of his face pressed into the worn wood. A book lies open before him, and as Zoey peers at its contents, the charcoal lines move themselves about.
This must be his work room, she decides. Books line all of one wall, most of them dog-eared and tattered, notes and bookmarks sticking out at haphazard angles. A few are bound in only plain, rough-cut leather, with uneven pages. They have no titles on their bindings, and they’re the only ones lying on the ground.
Zoey picks one up. It feels curiously light, as though the contents of it are trying to fly away.
She opens the book to a random page, somewhere near the middle. It’s full of notes, scribbles; it’s all Rythian’s handwriting. These are his notes, his work.
Are they the key to his magic?
Zoey grabs another one and flips through it. She stops on a page with a picture, a construction of some kind. It’s curiously complex, and from what she can read of the rushed writing, it is one step in the process of making magic.
The way the lights in the room gutter and flicker is the only warning she has.
Rythian is suddenly there, and she’s pulled roughly to her feet and shoved back towards the doorway. Her back collides with the wall and she feels trapped there as he stalks towards her.
He is shadow and fury and fear and Zoey tries to run but her legs aren’t working, nothing’s working and she can’t escape, the shadow will devour her and she’ll be ripped to pieces in the darkness.
Rythian’s eyes blaze purple and his words are hard to make out, blurred with static fury as he snarls, “I told you the price, I told you and still you want to know?”
Zoey tries to speak but her words are a rush, they’re a mess and even she can’t tell them apart. He cuts her off anyway, his anger the only thing fueling the shadows in the room.
“Fine,” he growls, “how’s this?” He slams their heads together, as hard as he can, and Zoey thinks she might black out.
Instead of darkness, all that greets her is fear. She is terrified, she is so scared - she only wanted to protect, she only wanted to help them, she didn’t want this, she wanted to help them fight but they’re getting ripped apart because of her, because she was stupid enough to try and save them.
“That is the price I paid,” Rythian hisses in her ear. There is still static in his voice, but less; his anger is fading.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, her eyes squeezed shut, and she is. She’s not sure who she’s apologizing to; the people she - the people Rythian hurt, or to Rythian for seeing this, for knowing this, but she apologizes anyway. “I’m so sorry.”
Rythian apologizes then too, he wipes away her tears and draws her close, and Zoey has never been more grateful for the warmth of another human before.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and there is no apology in his voice; blood drips from his mouth, and he grins at the wreck he’s made of their throat. It’s a torn mess, muscle and sinew still struggling to pull in air in spite of the gash in their neck, and his red eyes reflect the scene perhaps too well.
“I’m sorry,” she cries, and she is so broken. She can’t reach him, can’t help him, but he’s suffering and it’s her fault. He screams and the sound is not quite feline and just barely human, and his form is twisting and it hurts him so much, and it hurts her too.
“I’m sorry,” they hiss, and there’s only the slightest hint of regret there. It had to be done, they know it - it feels wrong even so, to kill someone so like them. A few steps in a different direction and that would have been them. They cut that part of themself away, cut away the disease.
“I’m sorry,” he says somberly. He is speaking to a grave, unmarked, unnamed. It is not anyone’s grave in particular; he made it, so long ago, for all he hurt and wounded and killed. It pains him that he still has to stand before it, but he refuses to let his power consume him.
It’s been a week since Zoey first found Rythian’s books. He no longer locks that room, trusting instead in the half-memories, the feelings he put in her head.
Zoey isn’t so sure that she’ll be able to keep herself away. The shadows come more everyday, and all Zoey wants is the power to chase them away and save Rythian.
She has known him for so little a time, but somehow it feels like she has always known him. She was always meant to know him, she thinks.
Why she was meant to know him, she’s not sure. Maybe she has to protect him, maybe she has to save him; maybe she is meant to ruin him.
Zoey is still scared of the shadows, but less so - shadow doesn’t always mean evil, sometimes it means him and he is safety, he is protection and if the shadows come, he will save her.
He will save her, but still she wants magic; she must help him, she can’t be dependent on him forever.
“Zoey?” Rythian calls. “Are you awake?”
“Yes,” she replies through the door. She has no idea what time it is; though she tries to sleep regularly, it’s hard to keep track when she’s mostly underground.
The door opens, and he’s there. He looks tired - he looks so tired, and Zoey just wants to pull him close and make him stay in bed, make him sleep - but he smiles at her nonetheless.
“I need a hand with something,” he tells her.
“Of course,” she says, rising from the bed to join him. She’s fully dressed; she only wanted to read, she hasn’t been tired in a while.
“I’m using magic,” he tells her as they head for his work room, and hurries to add, “but not the kind for people to drink. This would probably hurt you rather than help you.”
Zoey misses a comment Rythian mutters to himself, but she’s distracted as they turn into his room, a pile of roughly cut iron ore lying on the stone floor.
The pieces of a small clay circle sits on the table, and it’s this that Rythian picks up and hands to Zoey.
“Hold these,” are the only instructions she has, and he turns back to his desk. He rummages and searches, scanning his open books, and when Zoey almost thinks he’s forgotten about her, he grabs something and turns back.
“I spent a long time making this,” he tells her quickly, as if that explains anything, and pours two drops onto the pieces in her hand.
Rythian turns away even as Zoey watches in awe. The pieces fuse together, the faint light that seals them joining at the center to form a symbol she can’t quite place. He ignores her expression and hauls the lumps of iron ore from the floor onto his table.
“Put it on top,” Rythian says, and reaches for his flask. “And then stand back.”
He makes sure Zoey is safely out of range - ignoring his own distance, of course - and upends the container over the heap of metal and stone.
It’s hot, so hot that Zoey has to turn away; she can see a dark spot out of the corner of her eye, and she instinctively knows it’s Rythian, knows he’s using his magic for once.
When the heat fades - and the spot of darkness, too - she can hear a sound, like metal scraping over rock. She turns to look, and finds two tiny black eyes staring back at her.
The eyes are empty, void of any sign of life, and its gaze moves from her to Rythian when he snaps his fingers.
“Clean,” he says, and the tiny metal creature moves slowly, gradually, to pick up books and clean his table.
“What is it?” Zoey asks softly, her voice quieted by awe and fear.
“A golem,” he tells her. “Mindless, of course. It’ll help around the house.”
She regards it for a moment. “Johnny,” she says, as if that’s the final statement of an argument.
“What?” Rythian blinks at her in surprise.
“We’ll call him Johnny Iron,” she answers simply, and turns away.
He can only stare blankly after her as she heads back for her room.
Johnny Iron. His life has certainly gotten more interesting with her around.
And though he’s happy she’s here, and he’s happy these injuries take so long to heal, he can’t help but worry. Even Rythian couldn’t have missed the flicker of hope - of want - on her face when he’d mentioned magic.
“Why won’t you give up?” He hisses after her, as if his voice will follow her all the way to the bedroom.
“Why won’t you give up?” Green eyes, so harsh, soften with concern at the sight of the blood that overflows from the altar. The bloodmage turns to look at him blankly, so little humanity left in his red eyes - eyes that, his friend knows, were once a charming hazel-brown.
“Why won’t you give up?” He reaches for her, grabs her hand as she reaches towards the flames once more. The witch bites back a frustrated response and pulls away, sticking her hand into the fire. Again, instead of curving around her fingers, it licks at her burnt skin and she yells at the pain.
“Why won’t you give up?” They could do without his interference right now. He pretends he’s a god and that they are a mortal, but they will leave their mortality behind. They must become stronger, they must protect themselves and fight away the evils.
“Why won’t you give up?” Her voice is so gentle, and her touches are feather-light with concern. He groans, and he can feel that his clothes and skin are half-burnt, but he struggles up and out into the rainstorm again. He must protect her from the lightning; he has to do this.
“Rythian’s gone again,” Zoey says to the little golem.
Johnny Iron’s sitting on his table, like he has been for two weeks. He shuts down when Rythian’s not home - Zoey doesn’t know why it happens, but she uses him like a radar.
She grips his metal jaw like it might break and tips his head back, looking for any movement in those pitch-black eyes. With a sigh, she drops it, and his head clangs against his chest.
“Nevermind,” she mumbles, and hauls herself out of the chair.
Of course, she put together the pieces Rythian had given her in his last, desperate attempt to stop her from reading his magic books. He has memories of darkness, of others being hurt because of him and his decisions; she has memories of whirling shadows, of being hurt without reason, without crime.
She can assume he came from wherever home was, that place she left behind and lost in her memories so long ago. She could ask him, but - well, there’s nothing left. The shadows tore it to pieces, and she privately knows that she could never tell him what he did to her - did to them, that village and its people, so long ago.
If Zoey can get magic, all of that pain could be wiped away in a blaze of light. That’s all she’s ever wanted, really.
Zoey moves for the door, trying not to see the books lying on the floor, so nearly hidden in the shadow of the desk.
She tries - she really does - but she can’t quite manage to leave the room without looking over her shoulder, just once, at the books lying on the floor. It would be so easy with him gone; but she knows she shouldn’t, she simply shouldn’t.
And almost before she’s thought it over - he’s been gone for two weeks, if he comes back now Johnny Iron will come to life - she’s on the floor, and one of the books is in her lap, and she’s opened it.
It hurts her to read it, like a kid stealing cookies from the kitchen, but the guilt isn’t enough. Not even the guilt from the memories Rythian gave her is enough to stop her.
It’s her fear that drives her. Her gut instinct, her fear of the dark and shadows and the evil she can feel everywhere is what makes her read, what makes her scan the pages of Rythian’s precious handwritten books.
Zoey spends hours there - days, too, probably, but she can’t tell them apart anymore. All she pays attention to are the words in front of her and Johnny Iron, sitting beside her on his table, unmoving. Some of the words don’t make sense - sometimes she can swear that they’re written in another language, that she simply doesn’t understand the way thoughts are put together - but she thinks she gets it.
The other room, the only one Zoey can’t open, has the machines Rythian made for his magic. Jars, furnaces, things that she can’t even pronounce - what the heck is a “Thaumatorium” - tubes, essentia, wands and staffs and caps and crucibles are all stowed away. He didn’t dare destroy them, apparently, for fear of what they might do if he tried to take them apart, but he’s locked them away.
She needs magic to unlock the door. She’s not entirely sure what that means, but she knows it’s a problem. The walls in Rythian’s home are basalt infused with obsidian; nothing is breaking them anytime soon. Rythian hasn’t returned to that room for at least three weeks, by her guessing, and she needs to get inside to make magic.
Johnny Iron. He was magic, wasn’t he? Somehow, some kind of magic was put into his core to make him move and help and function.
Zoey turns to look at the tiny metal golem. She picks him up gingerly, as if making too loud a noise would wake him up, and carries him to the closed door.
She taps the door with him, makes him knock on it - it’s not until the core’s edge accidentally bumps into the smooth stone that it opens, and the darkness inside smells foul and evil and instantly Zoey is regretting her choice to even open Rythian’s books.
Part of her wants to go put Johnny Iron back, but there’s no point. She doesn’t know how to close this door, she just has to hope she can do what she wants before Rythian gets back.
The lights brighten as she steps into the room, and her breath catches in awe as she looks around. It’s a big room - it’s a hall - and it’s full of magic things, that hum and whirr when she gets close, and shut off again as she walks away.
At first all Zoey wants to do is look, but she knows she’d better hurry. Rythian has been away for two weeks, but there’s no telling when he’ll be back, and making magic takes time.
She can still stop. She pauses, debating. Does she really want to do this?
She has no choice.
“Don’t,” he hisses, expression desperate beneath the blood.
“Don’t,” she begs, blue eyes wide with fear and desolation.
“Don’t,” they cry, and it hurts them how much they care.
“Don’t,” he pleads, and he is so close to using force.
It takes time.
She tells herself that, over and over.
Be patient.
She really doesn’t want to be patient.
Getting the ingredients for it probably took the longest. She had to use fire without fuel, light without a source; pure elements, separate from their causes, that probably shouldn’t have been possible to collect.
The magic sits there, simmering, warmed by blue flames that Zoey’s not going to bother questioning. She forces herself to be patient as she adds a drop of glowing gold; and another, and another. The liquid is so bright that she can almost feel its heat, settling into a layer just beneath her skin and sitting there.
It’s probably a week from start to finish, collecting her materials, purifying them, melting them down and mixing them together and adding more until the glow is bright but not too bright, when the scent is strong but not too strong.
She pours it into a wooden goblet - it’s shaped like an hourglass, top equal to bottom, and she’s made just enough magic to fill it to the brim.
And here, at the very end, Zoey pauses.
Will it kill her? Will it save her?
What if Rythian’s right?
What if they were right, all the mages she can’t quite remember but knows she’s met?
Zoey lifts the wooden cup. The liquid inside is half-transparent, shining with a warm golden glow she so carefully tended.
She drinks.
“You fool,” he says softly. He is angry - incredibly so - but it’s too late for his anger. He is only gentle now, because there’s no point in being angry anymore.
“It is a pulse in your veins, a whisper at the edge of your voice, an echoed memory of a dream from long ago.
“It is magic.
“Do not forget it.”
Zoey wakes up slowly.
At least, she thinks she’s woken up. It’s hard to tell, with all the darkness around her.
It’s odd, she ponders distantly. She’s not scared of the dark anymore. She doesn’t need to be, now that she has heat settled so warm just beneath her skin. It’s warmest in her fingertips, and she lifts her hand and draws lazy, light-heat lines in the air.
It’s then that she realizes how dark it really is.
Even in the glow of her magic, she can’t see her hand. All she can see are the lines, warmth and light fading back into the darkness. She draws more and watches for her hand, but again, the darkness is so complete.
“Rythian?” She calls. If it’s this dark, surely he must be nearby.
He doesn’t answer, and she sits up. She’s not sure how she got from his magic room to the bedroom, but she can feel the sheets beneath her and the scent of smoke and candle wax hangs in the air.
“Rythian?” She calls again, louder this time.
Now she can hear him, and he’s running; he sprints down the hallway - she can hear his footsteps - and flings open the door. No light comes in through the entryway, but he finds his way to her easily in the darkness. She can hear the slightest hesitance in his steps, as if the magic of this room is almost too much, but he ignores it in favour of going to her side.
“Are you okay?” He asks, and she realizes she can see him - almost.
Instead of him, she can see something faintly pulsing in the air. It’s purple, and it flickers and gutters in between his quick breaths.
“Fine, but why is it so dark?” She asks him instead.
He sighs, and she realizes that the glowing light is his scars. “This is the second time you’ve woken up. Do you remember what happened last time?”
Zoey feels a flare of panic at his words, but forces it down and searches her memory. There’s something between here and before, but it’s only a dim mess of heat and light and pain. “No,” she says quietly.
He takes a deep breath. “Give me a second,” he says, and strikes a match.
The light from a single match is so bright that Zoey cries out aloud; she buries her face in her hands and tries to make her burning eyes stop watering.
The light goes out, and Rythian says softly, “That is your price. You wanted light; and so light burns you.”
“But my light doesn’t,” she protests tearfully, and forms a soft ball of yellow light in her palm.
Now, if Zoey holds her hand very close to the sound of Rythian’s voice, she can just see him. His scars are very faint in the dim light, and she thinks quietly to herself that they look very pretty.
Her light is just bright enough to catch the way his eyes see so easily in the darkness, the way he scans her face. And though her light is bright, and it glows in the dark, it is barely enough to light up anything.
“Now do you understand?” He says softly. “Play with fire and you will get burned.”
She nods, once, in agreement. “This is my price,” she says, and the words are heavy in her mouth. They taste like warmth and light on her tongue, and she wishes desperately she’d never made this decision.
Safe from shadow but banished from light: it’s the compromise she never, ever would have wanted.
“This is my price,” Parvis tells her, and blood drips from his arms and runs into the shallow bowl. Zoey wishes she could unsee, desperately wants to unknow the price he’s paid.
“This is my price,” Lomadia says softly, and shows her the scars from all the times she’s been called a witch, tells her about the accident that bound Nilesy to her. Zoey wishes she could unhear, desperately wants to unknow the price she’s paid.
“This is my price,” Lying announces, and their form twists until they are anything but human, and she can hear their bones crackle. Zoey wishes she could unhear, desperately wants to unknow the price they’ve paid.
“This is my price,” Kirin tells her sadly, and bright lightning streaks down from the sky, setting his bones afire and burning his skin. Zoey wishes she could unsee, desperately wants to unknow the price he’s paid.
“This is my price,” Zoey recites, and she closes her eyes forever against the sunlight, and against the gleam of moonlight, and against the shine of stars overhead.
Zoey wishes she could undo, desperately wants to unknow the price she’s paid.