Book Two - Chapter Four (Patreon)

“Your record is a mess. Insubordination. AWOL. Striking a superior officer? I’ve seen shorter on a penal legionnaire,” the sergeant grunted. “Are you just about done staring?”

Alarion stiffened abruptly, color creeping up his neck.

“Sorry, Sir. I have just never-”

“You and every other farm boy. And it is Kali, not Sir. I work for a living.” The man studied Alarion for a second longer before he sighed. “Ask.”

“You are Godborn, right?”

“What gave it away?” Kali asked dryly.

The answer, in a word? Everything. 

Kali was unlike any man Alarion had ever met. He towered over the boy, well over seven feet in height and twice as wide in the shoulders as Alarion. He dominated the small office, his head nearly touching the ceiling as he stood behind his desk. 

His body was hard muscle from tip to toe, as if carved from marble—an apt comparison given his incredibly pale skin. Stranger still was the blue of his eyes. Not Vitrian ice-blue, but an energetic blue flecked with specks of ivory, a blue that matched the close-cropped hair and the stubble on his cheeks.

“You…” Alarion tried to form a coherent explanation, but settled for a vague gesture at the man’s appearance. “I thought Godborn would have silver skin?”

The words seemed to surprise Kali. The big man leaned back on his heels and gave Alarion a curious look. “What makes you think that?”

Alarion opened his mouth to answer, then frowned. Why did he think that? Someone had told him that Godborn had silver-dusted skin. But who was it? The memory was vivid, but none of the details remained. It was like a missing tooth, an empty space he could poke and prod, its absence defined by the things around it.

Another memory of Valentina Lyons.

He’d gotten good at recognizing those over the years. The sorcery that had stripped his memories following his time in Lal Viren’s challenge dungeon had been powerful, but also limited by necessity. The goddess wished to keep her challenges secret, but also for her challengers to learn and grow from the experience. The mental wipe had been successful for the most part, but things blurred at the edges where practical experience intersected with things the goddess wished to keep hidden. 

For example, he remembered a woman teaching him how to enchant his mace, but not what she looked like or what she said. He remembered a white room and the overwhelming magical pressure that had helped teach him [Introverted Mana Sense], but the only thing he remembered about his tutor was the gold of a necklace.

On their own, they were like fleeting memories from infancy, single instants in time that burned through an otherwise impenetrable fog. Together, though, they built a picture. Without Valentina’s letter, he’d never have thought twice about the flashes of recollection, but the knowledge of what he was missing brought them into focus. He still couldn’t picture her face or remember her voice. But every half memory brought him a little closer.

The memories weren’t gone. He was sure of it. Only suppressed. Concealed.

“Soldier?” Kali asked expectantly.

“Someone… mentioned it.” Alarion frowned as he focused on the memory. “Godborn are an Incarnate’s offspring. Or the children of those offspring. She said they’d have silver-dusted skin and eyes.”

“Lal Viren’s Godborn would, if she ever had any,” the sergeant explained, eyeing Alarion oddly. “I am descended from Lal Sera. Seven generations removed.” 

“So, you all look different?”

“Ivory, ebony, gold, and silver. As the saying goes. And to answer your last question, no, most of us aren’t quite this big.”

It wasn’t Alarion’s last question, not by a long shot, but he could read the room despite his momentary shock and lapse into utter rudeness. “I will do my best not to be an issue going forward.”

“Your best?”

“I prefer not to make promises outside my control, Sergeant,” Alarion answered. When it was clear that the answer was unsatisfactory, Alarion clarified. “Point me at fiends and I will do my job. I will kill the reclaimed dead without issue, but I prefer not to fight the living, and I will not take up arms against the Ashadi.”

It was a risky card to play up front. If the other soldier took the words as insubordination, Alarion could be back in a cell before nightfall. But he had a hunch that honesty would be the best policy in this circumstance.

He was proven right as Kali snorted in amusement and turned his eyes back to Alarion’s dossier. He spent half a minute flipping through while Alarion waited patiently before he spoke. “We are on subjugation duty, so it should not be an issue. But these ad hoc formations are always messy; you have a problem with another soldier, you come to me. You have a problem with an order or with the CO, same deal. You don’t go off half cocked, you don’t jeopardize the task. You do not make me look bad. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” Alarion nodded.

“We leave at 0600, though I’ll expect you at the quartermaster at 0500. We only have two storage powers, and yours is by far the biggest, which means you get to be the mule.” When Alarion nodded again, Kali gave the dossier one last review and threw it on top of his cluttered desk amidst a pile of invoices and other similar but smaller dossiers. Bunks are in the long barracks, but don’t bother getting comfortable.”

“No real hope of finding a bath on base, is there?” It was wishful thinking. His [Mend] and [Clean] cantrips had done some heavy lifting during his weeks on patrol, but as with sleeping and [Valentina’s Energetic Embrace], at a certain point, there was no substitute for the real thing.

“Actually, you’re in luck.” Kali came around the desk and led Alarion out of the office before pointing to a small cluster of buildings at the opposite end of the camp. “They even have hot water.”

Alarion’s eyes brightened. He looked at Kali, then at the baths and back again. Only two years of military discipline kept him in place as he asked, “Permission to-”

“Dismissed,” the older man said with a roll of his eyes.

To his credit, Alarion restrained his urge to sprint across the compound in favor of a brisk power walk. He smelled the building before he reached it, a mixture of steam, soap, and industrial detergent. It smelled clean.

The bathhouse was simple but well-kept. Built of white stone in the local Ashadi style, it consisted of a squat hemispherical building with two hallways jutting off the side, each dotted with alcoves along their length. The main room was dim, illuminated only by a string of small lights attached to the ceiling, their luminescence lost in the dull grey of the rough slate floor.

As he took in the inviting sight, Alarion’s gaze fell on an older Ashadi woman scrubbing the floor with swift efficiency. Her silver hair sat in a tight bun high on her head, and her deep-set eyes glowered in his direction like he’d committed a heinous sin. 

“Mothers preserve!” she swore. “Are you blind, boy?!”

Alarion’s cheeks flushed as he glanced down and saw the trail of dirty prints leading back the way he came.

“Sorry,” he muttered, bending down to unlace his sandals before they could cause more trouble. His feet were only marginally cleaner, so he took a cautious leap onto a dirty part of the floor to minimize further damage to her work. “I can clean it up?”

“Soldiers, you’d think they could teach you to wield some manners along with a sword,” the woman complained. When he reached for the mop, she quickly swatted his hand away. “You’ll only make it worse. Everything you need will be waiting in the stall. Left side. Left, you understand me, boy?”

“Yes, madam,” Alarion answered with sharp military precision.

“Hmph,” she grunted. She resumed her mopping as Alarion moved toward the left wing, then abruptly spoke again. “Your uniform, what size is it?”

Alarion paused in his stride and looked back over one shoulder. “Small.”

“Hmm,” was her only reply.

Alarion stepped cautiously down the narrow hallway, watching for any recently mopped floors as the scent of steam and soap thickened with each stride. He passed by a series of curtained-off doorways, each leading to a small bathing alcove, each occupied. Some were silent, while splashing, singing, and even a quiet giggle could be heard from others. 

He made sure to put extra distance between himself and that last one. 

Finally, he reached an unoccupied nook and slipped inside. A tall circular wooden tub filled with steaming water took up almost the entire space, with a small ledge around the room piled high with soaps, towels, and bathing implements. The water carried the same chemical-scented tang that he’d smelled from outside, noticeably stronger up close, but he didn’t care as he quickly undressed and slipped into its warm embrace.

He closed his eyes for minutes or hours, lounging in an ocean of tranquility. Muscles he wasn’t even aware of relaxed as he sat there, his nose barely above the waterline. Life could still be good. Even with all the trials and tribulations, moments like these were a critical reminder that even the worst would pass.

It was a pity they could never last. Much as he wanted to, he could not avoid the conversation that was coming.

“Kotone,” he whispered as he bobbed back to the surface. “ZEKE, please.”

“Yes, miss! Yes, miss!” his familiar announced as it materialized with a foot-long piece of thin, iridescent metal. It dropped the item into Alarion’s waiting grasp and then disappeared with a pop of displaced air.

Alarion slapped the metal against his wrist, and it snapped snugly around, its size altering to accommodate his wrist. There was little sign of the damage the Duke had caused so many years ago, just a few hair-thin cracks around the center of his wrist near an elegant inlay of quartz.

“Are you going to say anything or not?” Alarion asked.

“What is there to say, young master?” ZEKE replied in his rich baritone. A small image of the Steelborn flickered into being, just above Alarion’s right wrist on the pool’s edge. Though no longer constrained to a physical form, Alarion’s once mentor seemed to prefer his old shape and voice over any of the myriad others he had tried in the intervening years. Especially when it came time to rebuke Alarion. “Scolding you for behavior you won’t change is definitionally insane.”

“I could not just stand there!”

“You could have, in fact, just stood there,” the machine rebutted. “I understand your refusal to disperse the crowd, however unwise, but at the bare minimum, you could have not punched an officer in the face.” 

The reminder brought the ghost of a smile to Alarion’s lips, and ZEKE sighed audibly as his virtual form paced along the edge of the tub.

“I trust it worked out in the end? This does not look like the gallows.”

Alarion spent the next few minutes bringing ZEKE up to speed on the day’s events. Though the machine had access to all five senses through the bracelet, items stored by Kotone existed in stasis, entirely disconnected from the outside world. Alarion had stored the bracelet three days earlier to avoid its theft, but only an instant had passed for ZEKE.

The machine didn’t like being stored. While ZEKE had initially been quite entranced with the functions of his new ‘body’, such as the sense of taste and smell, that excitement had eventually given way to anxiety. He was a passenger every time Alarion went into battle, with no guarantee of death or recovery, should the boy fall. But somehow that fear paled compared to the idea of being stored in perpetuity.

It was why the Steelborn was more testy than usual. They both knew ZEKE had to be concealed; he was riding priceless ancient technology and was a corroborating witness to the Trinity Massacre, as Ruin’s attack on the Manor Isle had come to be called. Either could be cause for someone to steal or destroy him. As far as the outside world was concerned, ZEKE was dead, and Alarion’s bracelet was a bit of odd fashion, no different from his scarf. It had to stay that way.

“You are lucky to have walked away with your head, young master. Let alone a mere six-month extension.” 

“I know,” Alarion said. He meant it, too. For all his nonchalance during his time in captivity, deep down, Alarion had known that he’d overstepped. Ruin’s patronage was a powerful shield, but even it had its limits. “Will the extension be a problem?”

The floating avatar of ZEKE shook its head. “No. The architecture collapse is still years away, at my current estimates. Provided no more damage is done to the bracelet, I will survive even your extended term of service. And though I am loath to say it, storage remains an option if the timetable moves up.”

“Good,” Alarion said with a note of relief. “That is good.”

“I am still annoyed.” 

“I thought you would be,” Alarion chuckled, tension draining out of him into the still steaming bath water. “You still have my word. I will get you to Null.”

“That, I never doubted,” ZEKE’s tone softened as his image settled down at the tub’s edge, transparent feet flickering as they kicked through the water. They sat in silence with one another for over a minute before the Steelborn spoke again. “Alarion?”

“Mm?”

“I think I would have hit him, too.”