Chapter 19: Witness (Patreon)

The woman circled him slowly, like a heron eyeing a landed fish. Elliot tried to think, tried to make a plan, but he felt rung out. All that kept coming to mind was the image of Olivia and Hrolf being buried in a pair of shallow graves. Why am I such an idiot? I’m going to die for nothing, and I’m taking two good people with me.

A small part of his mind kept noting something was amiss. He kept sensing another presence in the room beyond the four that were accounted for. Whenever he tried to nail down the thought, his focus slipped away.

The warehouse seemed darker than before. Both black spears piercing his would-be rescuers were emitting a deep hum, almost sub-audible, and each pulsed intermittently, color shifting from black to deep purple and then back again. Every time they pulsed, the corresponding victim would twitch slightly, but they were allowed no more movement than that.

Elliot closed his eyes. A part of him wanted to give up, to sit listlessly until his no-doubt imminent death. Another part of him wanted to cry, to sob and scream that this wasn’t fair, that they’d won, that this overpowering enemy arriving just at their moment of triumph was wrong. He took a deep breath. Was there anything to be done? He truly didn’t think so.

Opening his eyes, he glanced over at Hrolf. It was hard to look at the man—his face twisted, eyes wide and sightless. I should have listened to you. You wouldn’t give up. If you could so much as twitch, you’d die fighting. What am I doing sitting around?

Elliot stiffened his spine. There was one thing he could do, even if just to be annoying. He forced himself to look over to the second Talessi that he knew was there. Nothing he could do would change today’s outcome, but if they were trying to keep something hidden then that was exactly what he wouldn’t let them do.

At first, the gaps in his attention had escaped his conscious notice. The longer the woman circled him though, the more he was sure there was someone else. Someone pressing his mind away. Now he forced himself to look.

It was like gripping an oiled glass. As soon as he bore down, the figure faded from his thoughts. It took an immense amount of concentration to even remember the goal itself, especially with the prowling figure of the woman still eyeing him up and down.

But finally, on his eighth or ninth attempt, a pain stabbed at the back of his head and the enemy snapped into focus. It was a man. Short—five foot tall at most—and wearing a simple dyed-black linen shirt and trousers. There was a strange jug at his belt, almost like a classical amphora, and he wore a pair of thick black glasses. Their lenses seemed to sparkle even in the faint blue light. When Elliot squinted, he saw that tiny silver runes flickered in and out of existence all over the surface of the clear glass.

His next thought was to use [Detailed Appraisal], but every attempt to activate it while targeting any of the man’s clothes or possessions fell flat.

He was so focused on the man that he didn’t notice the woman had stopped circling until she reached out and grabbed his chin, jerking his face toward hers. “What were you looking at?”

“The man, obviously,” he replied. Stupid to admit to anything, but if he was going to die he wanted her to know that whatever spell was hiding her assistant had failed against a novice merchant. Even his anger was dulling though, and more than anything he wanted to lie down and rest. He frowned. Why was he so exhausted?

“That’s not possible for someone at your level,” the woman replied, almost sounding professorial. “Repeat what you just said.”

“I said the man. The one with the glasses.” He forced himself to meet her gaze, and smiled. “Am I not supposed to see him? Sorry. I wonder where else you’re weaker than you think.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I was prepared to write you off as a strange yet likely incidental inconvenience, your two friends not-withstanding, but you really shouldn’t be able to see him. That could make you a legitimate problem. Inconveniences have quick deaths, problems get sent back to Syreen for a more thorough evaluation.”

Elliot shivered. Somehow in his frustration and weariness he’d forgotten that imminent death wasn’t actually the worst thing that could happen. The Talessi would probably be less gentle than the Sunsguard. 

The woman looked over her shoulder. “Scan him.”

Glasses turned to them for the first time, rising from where he’d been fiddling with the rope of light restraining Red-hair. “It could break the concealment.”

“Only if one of the major players is here, and only if they’re actively looking for anomalies. The Sunsguard brought a single Towerbreaker, but she’s being shadowed. It’s a trivial risk. Scan him.”

The man approached with no further comment, crouching down in front of Elliot. The runes on his glasses were clearer now, forming and fading so quickly that Elliot could barely perceive them as individual shapes. The eyes behind the glasses were blue-white, almost like the man was blind. Glasses reached down to his belt and smoothly unhooked the jar, its red and orange glaze adorned with a pattern of flying figures that could almost have been griffons. In one quick motion, he raised the vessel above Elliot’s head and tipped it over.

Before Elliot could pull away something liquid hit the top of his head, and his vision stuttered. There was a sense of profound loss completely disconnected from his current circumstances, and a frigid cold. Then the pain at the back of his head again, and he was elsewhere.

He was floating in the middle of a blue-white cloud shot through with faint flashes of lightning. An almost inaudible ringing sound sat at the edge of his perception, like a massive bell had been struck seconds ago and its vibration was almost spent.

This is the same as before. It’s the world behind Earth. He felt a curious detachment. Instead of surprise, or wonder, he felt only vaguely inquisitive. There were no roads here, no golden veins of light, and no figures either armored in gold or formed from the surrounding fog.

There was a presence, though. It oozed in from nowhere like it was seeping through a crack in the wall of reality. A dark silhouette, roughly the shape and size of a small man. It moved toward Elliot’s vantage, and when it reached him it froze. A second passed without it moving, then another, then finally it jolted backwards as if it had been stung. Dissolving into a cloud of black motes, it shifted back through whatever fault it had found to arrive in that place, and was gone.

Elliot turned to observe the clouds around him, trying to see anything deeper than what was obvious, but before he could truly begin to observe he felt a ripping sensation, and everything went black.

His eyes snapped open and he was back in his body, gasping for air. Some kind of thick gray liquid was dripping down his face, and his heart was pounding. He clutched at his chest, feeling tremors pass up and down his frame. Then all the emotional weight of his situation hit him at once. The fear, the guilt, the frustration, it all arrived like his limbic system had been cleanly severed from the rest of his brain and then just reattached. What the hell? What was that?

Glasses had taken several steps back. He was staring at Elliot, his expression clearly startled despite being mostly hidden behind the spelled lenses. The woman looked agitated, flicking her eyes back and forth between the two of them. “What happened?”

“He was there when I arrived,” the man said slowly.

“What?”

“In the Fundament. He was there, looking at me.”

She scoffed. “You made a mistake.”

The man just kept staring, not deigning to answer. 

“What do you even mean by that? You can’t mean he projected himself?”

The man lifted one shoulder in what might have been a shrug. “He was there. He was watching me.”

She hissed out a breath of air, then turned to Elliot. “I don’t believe that for a second, but whatever you are, I think you’ll intrigue my Elders.” She reached a hand toward his forehead.

Before it could land, a streak of silver cut down from the ceiling an inch in front of Elliot’s face and the woman jerked her hand away. It was a spear, embedded quivering in the stone floor. A man dropped down behind it and Elliot’s heart began to hammer even harder. Hadrian. 

The hunter was already sprinting forward even as he yanked his weapon free. The woman had ceased any pretense at conversation, retreating rapidly as large shards of darkness coalesced around her figure and darted toward Hadrian in looping and unpredictable patterns. There were dozens of them, circling and lancing in from every angle, and all Elliot could think was that Hrolf and Olivia would have stood no chance even if she hadn’t struck while their guards were down.

Hadrian’s body erupted in a thin coat of white flame—contained to within an inch of his figure—and his spear began to spin. Despite the speed of the black shards, he managed to catch almost half of them in a series of sharp cuts as he surged forward. Those that made it past hit the white fire, and dissolved.

Elliot had begun to feel a soaring hope, but just as it seemed Hadrian was about to be within spear range of the retreating woman, Glasses flickered back into visibility between them. Elliot winced. He’d completely lost track of the second Talessi, despite all his earlier effort. 

Glasses had his fingers laced together over his heart, and Hadrian slammed his feet into the ground in an effort to pivot. Too late though, as the air around him cracked, thin white fractures forming countless runes that encircled his position. The hunter went still.

More and larger shards formed around the woman in an orbiting cloud. She kept her distance. “Hadrian, isn’t it? One of the Andalusian spies. You shouldn’t have been able to find us.”

“I did not find you,” he replied.

A forest of finger-width stone pillars erupted from the floor. They emerged every few feet throughout the entire warehouse, leaving clear visibility but no space at all to maneuver. One had struck right through the woman’s shoulder, her life spared by virtue of a desperate twist. The dark shards were gone as if they’d never been. None of the other combatants from either side had been touched.

“Killing Talessi always makes me feel young again,” came a familiar voice from the door. “Don’t move any further, dear. I wouldn’t take much tempting to just be done with you.”

For the first time in what felt like forever, Elliot felt a tension deep within him unclench. He turned to look at the entrance, already knowing what he would see.

Breka ambled in, leaning on her walking stick, the knotted wood looking nearly black in the poor lighting. She squinted at Hadrian, still trapped in the runic circle. “Embarrassing, boy.”

Hadrian sighed. “They brought a Witness.”

“You think I can’t see that?” Breka turned to look at the short man, who hadn’t moved an inch since the pillars erupted. “They brought more than him. I had to crush four husks outside before coming in.”

Hadrian’s eyes widened.

“And you,” she said, turning to Elliot, “I don’t even know what to do with you. You are an idiot with the self-preservation instincts of a demented woodrat, and yet you deliver this coup to me. I think I’ll congratulate you on your survival and double your training hours for the next few weeks.”

“What?” he said, eyes widening, “That’s not fair.” But even as he saw Breka’s mouth moving in reply, his fading awareness able to pick out the words ‘life’ and ‘unfair’, the world darkened around him. His last impression was of a tendril of stone rising to wrap gently around his body, and then his consciousness slipped away.