Shard, page 22
part #2 of Cruelly Made Series
“That you need Fell thread to stabilize your magic.”
Aether and Fell thread stabilize magic. There’s a reason it’s put into Mages. If I’m… stained… because of something that happened while I was in the womb, and my magic is unstable because of a Fell strand running through me that isn’t bound with Fell thread, I’d probably be unstable like a table with one leg that’s too short.
But then I shouldn’t exist at all.
And I can reach my Fells. Which I should not be able to do at all, but clearly can do, if only a little bit.
Atrament isn’t telling me something.
“So I need Fell thread,” I say. “How much?”
“Perhaps as much Aether as I needed.”
“You needed that?” I whisper. “I thought you were an experiment.”
He shrugs. “My conception was an experiment. The intent was not to produce anything in particular. It was merely to see what would happen. Shadows only exist in light. I do not exist unless there is light. You do not exist unless there is darkness. Crystal Mages were not always called Crystal Mages. You are called Crystal because it is easy for people to understand. But you are not a common Crystal. You are something else. Something more… primal.”
“You’re talking about the First Mages. The God-Forged.” We don’t know too much about the God-Forged. Well, we know a lot about them, but there’s a lot of arguments about what’s truth and what’s fiction. We know that the Pantheon—both the Gods We Name and the Gods We Don’t Name—created them. Hence, the name God-Forged, and they were similar to, but not like the Aethers that we learned to create later.
“Yes,” he says. “All the God-Forged were Luminous or Atrament. The various Aethers and Fells we have now—including Crystal—are just splintered pieces of the Luminous or Atrament whole, with the Crystals being closest to the Luminous. Luminous and Atraments are not a type, we are the whole. And you, and I, specifically, are entire, because you cannot have one whole without knowing the other.”
My exhausted mind spins. “Are you the first… modern… Fell with Aether thread?”
“I am a Warden’s more gruesome experiment. I’m the first to survive. The results otherwise are… grisly.”
“But you’re saying he isn’t trying to breed an army.” This is too much to process.
“He’s not.”
“He has to be corrupted by now.”
Atrament’s smile speaks for him in a lot of ways. “You haven’t noticed what he is? I’ve seen you studying him.”
“He’s not my type,” I say dryly.
Atrament laughs. “No. He is—or was—a Crystal. He couldn’t accept Aether.”
I shudder in shock. “He’s a Crystal?”
“His colors have faded to what you currently see, but he is—or was—a Crystal Mage. All Wardens are made from unusable, re-purposed Crystal Mages. Like all Priests are made from the same. They become something else here. What that is, I don’t know. Perhaps,” Atrament pauses, then says, eyes narrowed, “he wants to see if you can become a Warden. And what will happen if you do.”
“No,” I say softly, “Crystal Mages are rare.”
“Of course they are. Crystal Mages powerful enough to be useful to the military are extremely rare. But Crystal Mages suitable enough for life as a Priest? Far more common. The clergy keeps most of the reagents and efforts to themselves, and also spirits away weak Crystal infants from their families.” He gives me a sad look. “I am sorry so much of your life has been a lie.”
My heart screams in pain and my soul wretches under my skin, twisting through my Aether.
I have not cried in a long time.
Now I weep.
31
Crystal
“What happened with the Blightling?” I ask Atrament, tucked up against the headboard of the featherbed and feeling utterly drained and despairing.
He sits on the edge of the bed, halfway between the footboard and my feet. “It was returned to its pen. It will be studied.”
He looks to the side, as if listening to something.
Fell thread. Did I believe him? Was he lying to me to trick me into something?
All this would make sense if it is as easy as the Warden’s breeding his own army to make a bid for power, but he’s not.
“Where’s ScatheFire?” I ask.
He turns his attention back to me. “The Warden is coming.”
“Don’t change the subject. ScatheFire’s alive. You told me he was alive. You wanted me to come find him!”
The door shoves open.
The Warden steps inside the cavern. He glances at the scene and says, “This looks promising at first glance.”
Atrament does not react. I glare.
“I heard you were very impressive in combat against some unexpected Blightlings.” The Warden paces into the room. “Were you hoping to escape, or were you just bored, Lady Crystal?”
I don’t reply.
“How badly was she injured?” the Warden asks Atrament.
“Mildly,” Atrament replies, his tone non-committal and almost bland.
“Move.” The Warden gestures with two fingers.
Atrament hesitates a split-second, then stands and moves to the side. I recoil against the headboard as the Warden approaches the bed. “Were you two negotiating something and I should let you return to it, or were you just finishing?”
“You’re disgusting,” I snarl. “There’s an Old One below us and you want a baby conceived in this literal hellhole!”
He smirks at me. “Yes, Lady Crystal, that is exactly what I want.”
“We’ll breed a monster!”
“Perhaps. That’s the point of an experiment. The Wardens of the Pit have been conducting… controversial…experiments for a very long time. None have ever had a Crystal Mage like you to use.”
Atrament does not react. The shadows along the wall behind him—which the Warden can’t see—dance in the shape of flames.
The Warden pulls the blankets off my naked legs. “Ah, perhaps I did interrupt your efforts.”
I yank my legs up around myself and instantly regret it as my burned skin screams in protest.
“You did not. She’s injured in delicate areas,” Atrament comments.
The Warden glances over his shoulder. “I know you are inexperienced with females, but we had a conversation about basic etiquette. I thought I made it clear that I did not mind if you forced her, but being excessively violent is not necessary. We can simply restrain her if she fights too hard.”
How is this man not Blighted?
The Warden yanks my ankles to straighten my legs. I am too shocked to resist, and when it dawns on me to fight, I decide not to just to see what he does next. He pushes my legs apart and examines the scalded, burned skin running from the inside of my ankles all the way up to my genitals. He examines the burns like he’s contemplating vegetables.
So does he just not have emotions? Is that why the Blight can’t get to him? He just has nothing to feed on? No heart, no soul, no desires, no wants, no needs, no urges?
“She’s fine,” the Warden says after his brief inspection. “Do not delay, Atrament.”
Atrament does not reply.
“I’ll give birth to a monster,” I say fiercely.
“Atrament is not a monster. Not like you mean.”
“What?” I recoil right against the headboard.
The Warden’s lips curl in a very slight smirk, but it’s not delight at the perverseness, just amusement at how naïve I am. “He was not my project. Credit for him belongs to a Warden before me.”
Atrament shows no emotion.
“He’s not the product of breeding a Fell and an Aether,” the Warden tells my expression of blank horror. “He’s the product of breeding a rather mild-tempered maid to a Fell here in the Pit. She was hired for the task so she’d be as willing as possible. The Fell was not an Imperial Fell. The Warden found a powerful rogue Fell with street-thread and paid him handsomely for his contribution. Unfortunately, the Fell succumbed to the… seductions… of the Pit and never left.”
“And… her?” I whispered.
“Also didn’t last long, I’m afraid,” the Warden says. “But that was due to birth-bed fever, and nothing more sinister. The infant you know as Atrament was wet-nursed and reared until he was a boy at a minor noble’s estate, being passed off as the Warden’s illicit bastard. He came back here when he was six and has been here ever since.”
Atrament offers zero comment.
“You monster,” I whisper.
“Me? I did not create him, I inherited him.” The Warden chuckles.
“But you hold him here! He isn’t your fucking… mule!”
“By now, Lady Crystal, there is no place for him anywhere but the Pit. He hasn’t been properly socialized.”
“Bullshit. I’ve seen him acting perfectly reasonable around polite company.”
“Of course the military knows about him,” the Warden explains. “They believe he is a Warden’s illicit bastard got on a town wench, and that Warden hid him away out of shame. They have no idea he was an experiment.”
“He isn’t your prisoner!” I snap. “He’s not livestock!”
“Stop delaying, Atrament,” the Warden tells the Fell instead. “I want your seed inside her. I’m not interested in delays or courtship.”
Atrament doesn’t respond.
“What about Blood? Rot? Smoke?” I demand as the Warden goes to leave. “What about them?”
“What about them? They’re still here.”
“Are you being an asshole to them too?”
“I don’t think if I gave them pretty wenches they’d consider me cruel,” the Warden says. “But no, I’ve no interest in using any of them for experiments. They are standard-issue Imperial Fells. Nothing remarkable about them.”
Except that they were Imperial Fells, and that made them remarkable. And they were my Fells, and I was getting them out of here.
The Warden turns to go. I resist throwing crystal spears right through him.
“I expect progress the next time I’m here, Atrament,” the Warden advises him. “I am not interested in excuses. Only results.”
Atrament nods once.
The Warden closes the door behind him.
I eye Atrament, waiting for him to spring on me like a spurred horse.
The shadows retreat off the wall and slide away, and his attention is elsewhere for a few moments. “The Warden is returning to the top of the prison complex.”
“Great.” I don’t need that sort of update. “What’s going to happen now? Going to do your trusted Warden’s bidding and rape me?”
Atrament blinks once, slowly. “No. Of course not.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Because you made it sound like you intended to do his bidding.”
“I intend to put in a good faith effort. He is not Blighted, as you can see. Even giving orders like that. How does he get his hands so bloody without getting stained?”
I sit on the edge of the bed. “If it’s my consent you’re hoping to get, you will never gain it.”
“I fear he will drug you,” Atrament says. “I fear he will drug both of us. One to render you comatose, one to render me a slave to my flesh. Both options exist, and he has many ways to ensure we consume them.”
Atrament speaks so matter-of-factly it’s hard to tell how he feels about any of this, but I guess since he’s talking about it at all, he’s at least a little disturbed. “So you’re an experiment.”
“Yes.”
“Have you always known that?”
“I always knew I was different. I was raised as a bastard, out-of-the-way, fostering at a remote noble’s country estate. The other children were cruel to me, of course. I don’t remember the name of it or where I was. I was brought back here as a very young boy.”
Yes, I know exactly the sort of fosterling situation he’s talking about. Bastards are quietly sent to remote enclaves to be brought up by minor nobles or local officials. The children are usually spirited away soon after birth. Many times they’re raised as foundlings with no idea who their true parents are. Sometimes the birth family shows up to claim them, although usually passes the child off as the offspring of some relative that has a history of scandal and is conveniently dead.
I suspect many are actually abandoned or turned into servants. “Do you have a name under your thread?”
“I do. Do you?”
“Yes.”
“And then I was brought here,” he says. “I have never left this place since.”
“Not even to the town at the edge of the swamp?”
“I have been a few times to accompany a Warden,” he amends. “And hunting on horseback with guests. I sometimes am asked to provide amusement for the nobles who come here.”
That’s utterly monstrous, and he doesn’t even realize it.
“Do you even know how old you are?” I ask.
He pauses, considers, then says, “No, I’m not sure at all.”
“So you are a prisoner here.” Nothing can make the Priests or Researchers or even the Warden stay here. They can leave. They might not like the consequences of leaving, but they are allowed to leave. Atrament can’t leave. He has no family, no where to go, he doesn’t even know how to live outside the Pit. “You are kept down here in these levels unless the Warden needs you for something.”
He ponders this. “I do not feel like a prisoner.”
“You’ve never wanted to leave?”
“I’ve never let myself think too much on it. As the Warden says, I haven’t been socialized.”
It’s like my own warped reflection staring back at me. I grab his hands. “I will never consent to having a baby down here. Never.”
His expression doesn’t change, but by now, I can see he’s thinking. His emotions are drawn away, far from where the world can’t see them.
“You kept me company in solitary for a reason,” I tell him softly. “You showed me ScatheFire for a reason. To give me hope, to keep me company, to pull me down here.”
He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to, he doesn’t have the answers, that’s fine.
“I won’t consent, and the Warden will drug us both,” I say. “Can you live with that? I know he wants to understand the Blight, but there are limits.”
“Are there?” Atrament asked. “It is the sacrifice and risk of one life.”
“It’s an infant! It’s innocent, it had no say in anything! It shouldn’t have to bear the consequences!”
Atrament slips his fingers around mine to hold my hands gently. “Your parents conceived you as a Crystal Mage, knowing the horrible life and fate they were giving you to.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Because the Empire needs Aethers,” I say.
“How do you know the Empire does not need our child and we don’t know it yet?”
“I am not bearing a child to have it be the Warden’s lab rat,” I growl. “You at least had little children to play with, didn’t you? Well, our baby wouldn’t have anyone to play with down here except whatever Blightlings come through.”
Atrament ponders this.
“The Warden isn’t going to relent,” I say urgently. “We have to escape.”
“No one escapes the Pit.”
“We can. Tell me where ScatheFire is, help me get the Fells out—I won’t leave without them—and come with us.”
“What will we tell the army when I show up?”
“We’re going to tell them I’m a Shard.”
“But you aren’t a Shard,” Atrament says.
“I can fake it,” I say. “We’ve been practicing. You just say I’m your Shard too. The Imperial army will not care if an Atrament like you suddenly shows up and is part of a Shard team. They won’t. They’ll be too busy being thrilled I’ve pried you out of the Warden’s grip and now they’ve got an excuse to have you in their armory.”
“I have never been anywhere but here,” he says uncertainly.
“You won’t be alone. I promise I can make the Fells accept you as part of the team.” Hell, us busting a powerful Atrament out of the Pit to join the Imperial army probably qualifies as hero and will get Blood that peerage. “Where’s ScatheFire? He’s still alive. I know you know he’s still alive, and you know where he is.”
“I do, but you need Fell thread to stabilize your magic.”
“We don’t have time,” I say. “If it’s anything like getting Aether, it’s weeks of recovery. We can’t risk it.”
Atrament studies me for a long moment. “I suppose not. I don’t know if I will leave this place, but I know how we can earn the Warden’s good will for a short time. There will be risk to you.”
“Fine. Don’t care.”
“You haven’t asked what the risk is.”
“I’m trying to escape the Pit. There are going to be risks. Big ones. Huge, even.” I want out of here before the Warden uses me to breed a new race of monsters for his sick experiments, before he kills my Fells, before ScatheFire turns to rot, and before Atrament is used again and again and again.
Whatever the Warden’s secret is, I’m not staying around to figure it out.
He squeezes my hand, and his fingertips explore my palm. “I have never held hands with someone before. Not like this.”
“Am I bothering you?”
“No. I like it. You do shine brightly. I can feel you against my Fell thread. Can you feel me against your Aether?”
“Yes.” He’s a soft, pleasant feeling. “But I’ve know your presence for a long time.”
He smiles very faintly.
32
Crystal
“Where is ScatheFire?” I say. “Take me to him.”
“You understand that I will tell the Warden that I have negotiated an agreement with you: I indulge your whim to see ScatheFire, you submit to my loins,” Atrament says.
“Sounds plausible. Is this where we’re trying to get good will?”
“Yes. There will be a risk to you.”
Risk? Like I give a fuck about risk anymore. “Take me to ScatheFire.”
