Chương 124: Chapter 123 – Ethan of Ashholt

The gauntlet came off first. Ant worked the buckle at his wrist with his thumb, the metal still warm from his own skin, and looked at it sitting there in his palm like it had personally betrayed him.

"We should have thought of this before we left," he said.

"We did think of it." Rebekah crouched a few feet off, checking the strap on her boot for no reason he could see except that her hands needed something to do.

"We just didn't think of an answer. There's a difference."

"Helpful."

"I try." Mahkir sat with his front paws together, doing his best impression of patience, which mostly meant staying quiet long enough for someone smarter than both of them to solve the problem before he had to. The collar sat heavy and obvious around his neck, brightvein-forged, the kind of thing that caught morning light and held onto it. Anyone who'd stood in the stands two months ago would know that collar on sight. Half the continent had watched it happen.

Lem sat a little apart from the rest of them, tail curled around his paws, watching the whole argument without much concern either way. Nobody was worrying about him. Nobody needed to. A spirit fox that never showed off any of what he could actually do looked, to anyone who didn't already know better, like exactly nothing worth a second glance. Bury it, Mahkir suggested. Dig a hole. Very simple.

"And when we need it again?" Dig it back up.

"In a clan territory we're not supposed to know the layout of, weeks from now, hoping nobody's built a shed on top of it." You have a better idea. He didn't, was the problem. He turned the gauntlet over once more and thought about the collar, the greaves, the ring, everything Hazel had built or Ant had won that made him look like exactly what he was, and pulled up the equipment tab out of habit more than hope, just to stare at the list laid out in front of him like staring might produce an answer.

There's an icon at the bottom you've never opened, the voice said, from somewhere behind his own thoughts. Small. Easy to miss next to everything else on that screen. It's always been there, waiting on you to actually look. Ant checked, and there it was, tucked into the corner of the tab where he'd never once thought to look because nothing had ever needed looking there before. A small dark square, unlabeled, sitting quiet under the gear slots like it had been waiting years to be asked about. What is it.

It stores items, the voice said. Equipment included, not equipped, not worn, just held somewhere else until you need it back. That much I know. What I don't know is how much it can hold. It isn't infinite. I just can't give you a number. And I can't tell you where it holds anything.

"Comforting," Ant said out loud, low enough that only Rebekah, still crouched over her boot, glanced up at the tone of it. I didn't say it to comfort you. He reached out and pressed the icon anyway, mostly because there wasn't a worse option sitting on the table. Something opened in the air a foot from his outstretched hand. No shimmer. No light. Just a hole, black at the center, dense enough to swallow the morning light whole.

The edges held steady, clean-cut, like someone had taken a knife to the world itself and left the wound open. I don't like that, Mahkir said, immediately backing up half a step, ears flat. You don't know what it is. You don't know where it goes. And you're just going to put my collar in it. I'd guess yes, the voice said, mild. Unless someone has a better plan for a Rare-grade collar that half the continent watched him wear on a stage two months ago. Mahkir didn't answer that one, which was answer enough.

He reached toward the black and felt cold first, then nothing at all, his hand vanishing to the wrist without resistance or sound. He dropped the gauntlet in. It didn't fall. It just wasn't in his hand anymore, and the space where it had gone stayed black and empty-looking regardless of what had just gone through it.

"Try pulling it back," Rebekah said, closer now, arms crossed, watching the portal the way she watched anything that might need an arrow put in it. He thought about the gauntlet and reached in again, and his hand came back with it already in his grip, no searching, no fumbling around blind. It simply arrived, like his hand had known where to go before he did.

"Well," Rebekah said.

"That solves the shed problem." It took the better part of twenty minutes to get the rest stored. The breastplate, the greaves, the boots, the helmet, the ring, the collar last of all, Mahkir holding still and unhappy while Ant worked the clasp free and watched the brightvein disappear into the black one piece at a time.

What came out the other side, once they'd both stripped down to plain traveling gear and Mahkir stood there collarless and slightly smaller-looking for it, was two people who could have come from anywhere and a lynx who could have belonged to anyone. Ant checked his stats out of habit, the same way he checked them after any fight. [Str 19 | End 26 | Magic 34 | Agi 25 | HP 88/88 | Mana 268/268.] He stared at it a second longer than he needed to.

He hadn't seen a screen with numbers that small on it since long before Hazel's forge ever had his name on anything. Whoever this was on the readout, stripped back to nothing but himself, wasn't someone he recognized right away. The Resonance bonus needed all six pieces equipped to hold, the voice said. It's gone now, along with everything the individual pieces were adding on their own. Overload, Roulette, Speed Enhance, all three tied to gear you're not wearing anymore. They won't answer if you reach for them.

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"So it's not just numbers." No. Whatever's sitting in that storage isn't contributing anything, the same as if you'd left it at home. It only counts while it's actually on your body. A pause. Mahkir's collar works the same way. [MAHKIR: Str 24 | Agi 38 | Magic 42 | End 19 | HP 80/80 | Mana 120/120.] I noticed, Mahkir said, flat. He rolled one shoulder, testing it, like the number might have been lying about how it felt. I can feel exactly how much lighter I am. It's not a good feeling.

He shook himself once, ears flattening further. I feel naked.

"You're a cat. You're always naked." I feel more naked than usual, then. Is that better.

"Not really." The portal closed itself once the last item passed through, folding down to nothing just as quietly as it had opened. Ant stood there a second longer than he needed to, unsettled by how easy it had been, how little the System seemed to understand about a thing it had just handed him outright.

"Come on," Rebekah said, already walking.

"Ethan doesn't stand around staring at holes in the air. Ethan's never seen a hole in the air in his life. Ethan probably thinks magic is something that happens to other people."

"Ethan sounds exhausting."

"Ethan's your problem now. Try to keep up with him." The gate came into view an hour later, past a stretch of scrub trail that had gone from unmarked to worn to a proper cart track in the space of a mile, Marigolds' colors starting to show up on posted boundary stakes well before the wall itself did. Two guards stood at the checkpoint, a third pacing a slow loop behind them with a Kithren at heel, some kind of short-furred hound that watched Ant and Rebekah's approach with more interest than the guards showed.

"State your business," the taller guard said, not unkindly, just the flat delivery of someone who'd said the line a thousand times and expected to say it a thousand more.

"Looking to join," Rebekah said, before Ant could open his mouth and possibly ruin everything by doing it wrong.

"Both of us. Well. Him mostly. I keep books."

"Names."

"Beth, and this is my husband, Ethan," Rebekah said, easy, like she'd been saying it her whole life instead of six hours.

"We're out of Ashholt, east past the old Shell Razor ground. Clan folded a year and a half back, and we've been picking up work where we can since. I heard Marigolds are looking for people."

"We're always looking." The shorter guard hadn't looked up from whatever he was writing.

"Chips." Ant held his out first, because it felt worse to hesitate, and the guard took it without ceremony and slotted it into a reader mounted on the checkpoint post. A pause. Longer than Ant would have liked. He kept his face doing nothing. He'd practiced that in his head the whole walk over, and he didn't look at Rebekah, and he didn't look at Mahkir, and he definitely didn't think about the black hole that had swallowed a collar an hour ago, in case thinking about it somehow showed. The reader chimed.

Green light.

"Ethan of Ashholt," the guard read off, flat.

"Level six. Common tier bond, lynx-type. No priors." He glanced up, not suspicious exactly, just doing the job.

"You don't look level six."

"I get told that a lot."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning I've been swinging a sword since before the chip said I was any good at it, and the chip's slow to catch up. Farm work first, then patrol muscle for whoever'd pay, then no clan at all for a stretch. Levels come slower when nobody's handing you easy fights." He shrugged, aiming for the kind of tired honesty a man like Ethan would actually have.

"I'm not going to pretend I'm something I'm not. I fight fine. I'm not going to win anybody a tournament." The guard grunted, which could have meant anything, and slotted Rebekah's chip next. Another chime. Another green light.

"Beth of Ashholt. Level four. Bonded, fox-type." The guard glanced down at Lem, who blinked back at him with no more interest than he'd shown the gatepost.

"That thing do anything?"

"He fetches. He sulks when I forget to feed him on time. He's mostly for company." Rebekah reached down and scratched behind Lem's ear like she'd done it a thousand times before this morning.

"I do the books. Ethan does the fighting. Lem does whatever Lem wants, which is mostly nothing."

"Happens with the support-type ones." The guard didn't sound like he cared either way, which was its own kind of relief. He handed both chips back and nodded toward the hound-handler still pacing his loop.

"Garett will walk you in. Intake's past the second building, wait outside until someone comes for you. Could be a while. We had six show up yesterday and only got through three."

"We've got nowhere to be," Ant said.

"Everybody says that on the way in." The guard was already looking past them at whoever was next in line.

"Ask again in a week." Garett turned out to be the pacing guard, hound trotting easy at his heel, and he said exactly four words the entire walk to intake, all of them directional. The wall up close was taller than it looked from the trail, timber over stone, patched in places with newer wood that hadn't weathered to match the rest yet.

Past the gate the yard opened wide, more people moving through it than Ant had expected, patrol units heading out in staggered pairs, someone hauling feed toward a row of pens on the far side, the whole place carrying the low constant hum of a clan that had outgrown careful and settled into busy instead. Mahkir walked a half-step behind, quiet, watching everything with the flat attention of something cataloguing exits without being asked to. Big place, he said. Bigger than ours. Older, too, probably.

I could still take every fighter in it. Not the point right now. I'm allowed to think it. I'm not allowed to say it out loud. There's a difference. A pair of patrol units crossed paths near the pens, five to a side, one heading out with full packs and the other coming in dust-streaked, dragging their feet more than a short patrol should have left them. Nobody stopped to talk.

Nobody looked twice at Ant and Rebekah either, which Rebekah seemed to take as a personal victory, one corner of her mouth pulling up like she'd just won a small private bet with herself.

"Nobody cares who we are," she murmured, mostly to herself.

"That's the whole trick. Nobody in a place this size stops for two more faces unless you hand them a reason to."

"You sound disappointed."

"I'm never disappointed by being ignored. I'm just noting it for later." She glanced sideways at him.

"You, meanwhile, look like a man trying very hard not to look like the man who broke somebody's four-year winning streak."

"I'm working on it."

"Work harder. Ethan's never won anything in his life."

"Ethan sounds like he's had a rough go."

"Ethan's had the roughest go of anyone I've ever invented," Rebekah said, entirely straight-faced, and Ant had to bite down on a laugh before it turned into something audible in a place they couldn't afford it. Intake was a low building with a bench outside it, three people already sitting there when Garett left them at the door with his four words spent and nothing left to add.

Rebekah sat first, dragging Ant down beside her by the sleeve before he could decide where to put himself, and Mahkir folded down at their feet, tail curled in tight, small and unremarkable and looking nothing at all like a fighter who'd broken a four-year streak in front of half the continent. Lem curled up against Rebekah's ankle a moment later and looked, for all anyone watching could tell, like any other fox that had wandered in off a farm somewhere and decided to stay.

Nobody at intake so much as glanced twice at them. An hour passed. Then another. The bench emptied and refilled twice over, names called from inside in a voice too muffled to make out, and Rebekah leaned her head briefly against Ant's shoulder, more exhaustion than performance in it now that there was nobody close enough to watch the marriage being sold.

"Long night," she said, quiet.

"Longer day, probably."

"Ethan," she said, testing the name out one more time like she wanted to make sure it still fit.

"You're doing fine, by the way. In case nobody's said it."

"You said it."

"I'm saying it again. It counts more the second time." He almost laughed, caught it before it got loud enough to be Ant's laugh instead of Ethan's, and let it out as a short breath through his nose instead. Down at his feet, Mahkir's ear flicked once toward the intake door as it opened, someone stepping out and calling a name that wasn't theirs, and settled back down when it passed them by again. They waited.