Chương 145: Chapter 144 - The Blue Gem

Mahkir hadn't moved from beside him the whole time, watching the box with real attention, ears forward, tail still. The field around them had gone properly dark now, Fenhollow's last few lights gone behind the rise, the air carrying nothing but cut grass and the horse's own warm smell where it grazed a short way off.

"You don't have to be here for this," Ant said. You're joking, right. Mahkir's tail flicked once. Last time you tried one of these without me half a cave nearly came down on top of us. I'm staying. Ant laughed once, short, then let it go. Andy's voice was still sitting in the back of his head, plain and certain of itself. If there's a version of this where you're stronger, and that's the difference between winning and losing, then not going isn't caution. It's negligence. That had been about the trip to Fenhollow.

It applied just as well to the gem now sitting cool in his palm, small enough to lose in a closed fist, and he'd been putting off actually trying it since the moment he'd bought it. [MAGIC GEM] Magic Gem detected. Absorb? Y/N"Here goes nothing," Ant said, and closed his hand around it. Nothing happened for the first two seconds, long enough that he started wondering if the system had gotten it wrong, or if Kalsar's contact had somehow sold him a dud clever enough to fool even that.

Then the gem went warm, then hot, then past hot into something his hand didn't have a word for, and by the time he thought to let go his fingers wouldn't open. Light climbed up his arm first, not the pale barrier he half remembered from the first gem or the visible rope of mana Mahkir had described from the second, but something with real colour in it, white shot through with blue-white forks that crawled and split and crawled again along the lines of his veins. It didn't hurt exactly.

It was worse than hurting, a pressure underneath the pain rather than the pain itself, every part of him taken apart piece by piece and put back a fraction wrong. The grass under his knees had gone sharp and cold, a detail his body kept hold of even while the rest of him had stopped working properly. Somewhere further off he could hear the horse shifting its weight, still just cropping grass, no idea anything unusual was happening ten feet away. Ant. Mahkir's voice had lost every trace of its usual dryness.

Ant, your eyes, they're sparking. Yellow streaks, right through them. He couldn't answer, his mouth no longer entirely his to use. Mahkir pressed in close against his side and stayed there, solid and warm, not moving even an inch back. The light didn't fade so much as get pulled down into him, drawn under his skin and gone, and when it was over he was on his knees in the grass without remembering going down, one hand still closed white-knuckled around a gem that had stopped being warm at all.

That's new, Mahkir said, crouching close enough that his breath stirred the grass by Ant's ear. Second time you went down, but the first time Kalsar caught you before you hit the ground properly. Nobody caught you this time.

"Didn't feel like the first two." Ant's voice came out rough, low and scraped raw, though he hadn't made a sound the whole time it was happening. He opened his hand. The gem was still there, dull now, spent.

"I can see why that book said three types of magic was the limit for a magical soul." Ant turned the spent gem over once in his palm.

"Whatever a soul like that actually is. I guess this is all I have." [UPDATED] Magic Gem successfully absorbed. Magic +15 Mana capacity +100 [SKILL UNLOCKED] Lightning Storm Summon a storm overhead, calling down lightning across a wide area. Cost: 100 mana [SKILL UNLOCKED] Lightning Speed Increase a bonded Kithren's Agility by 200% for two minutes. Cost: 20 mana · Bonded target only. [SKILL UNLOCKED] Lightning Shield Summon a shield of lightning that paralyses enemies within range.

Cost: 5 mana/second Ant read it twice before any of it settled properly.

"Lightning," he said out loud, mostly to hear it confirmed by something other than his own head.

"Not ice." He'd half expected ice, if he was honest with himself. The colour had seemed obvious enough that he hadn't questioned it once since Selene had taken it out of the box. You look like ice. You've gone half grey. Mahkir tilted his head, studying him with the same open curiosity he gave anything he hadn't personally set on fire yet. Lightning suits you less, if I'm honest. But I wasn't consulted.

"Wasn't consulted on the colour either." Ant flexed his fingers one at a time, checking each one still answered. They did. Nothing felt broken, at least, whatever else had changed.

"The system didn't level up this time, interesting, just the skills and the stat increase." Progress is progress, whatever form it comes in. Mahkir's ears came up, already scanning the screen for himself. Storm, speed, and a shield. Not bad for one gem. Ant hadn't even finished reading them himself.

"You're faster at this than I am." You're the one who just got taken apart and put back together. I'm not the one who should be slow right now. Mahkir went very still on the second line, reading it again to be certain he hadn't misread it. Lightning Speed. Bonded target only.

"That's you, not me." Ant looked up at him.

"Twenty mana, two hundred percent agility, two minutes, and it only works on you." Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Just me. Mahkir sat back on his haunches, and for a second the usual sharpness went somewhere quieter. Good. You get to use my flame attack. Only fair I get to use one of your skills as well. Looks like it costs you mana for it, though, not me.

"You've had Flame Breath since day one. This isn't the first thing you've gotten out of any of this." That's my own, not something I picked up off an object, but I wasn't complaining either way. Mahkir's tail thumped once against the grass. Two hundred percent for two minutes is going to matter tonight, whatever's waiting for us. Ant almost let it go there. He would have, most days.

But the number itself kept working at him, three gems now, three schools, and he couldn't put it down even while he was still getting his legs back under him. [UPDATED] Evolution status: 1/2 The words sat in his vision for a long moment before either of them said anything.

"That's new," Ant said, quieter than he meant to. Mahkir went very still, which for him was its own kind of alarm. Say it again.

"Evolution status. One out of two." Ant turned the gem over once more, useless now, watching it stay exactly as dull and silent as before.

"It wasn't tracking anything at all in the cave. Zero out of two, and it just sat there." And now it's one. Mahkir's voice had gone careful, the register he only used when something actually mattered to him. Which means something we just did counted.

"Had to be the gem." Ant worked it out slowly as the words left him.

"Nothing else changed, unless it's not the gem itself and it's actually the count. Three now, not two." Or it had to be this one specifically. Lightning, not water, not fire. Mahkir's tail lashed once, sharp. We don't know which, and we might never know which. Neither of the other two came with an answer attached, and there's no reason to expect this one's different. Neither do I, the voice said, arriving uninvited, giving no sign it felt the urgency sitting under the question at all.

For what it's worth, my instinct says a fourth gem wouldn't trip the second criterion the same way. It felt too deliberate for that. But it's an instinct, not a certainty, and I've been wrong about myself before.

"Helpful," Ant muttered. I said what I know. I didn't say it would satisfy you.

"You never do." Ant waited a moment, but the voice had already gone quiet again, and he was left with the same questions he'd started with. One confirmed criterion we can't confirm, and one unconfirmed criterion we can't guess at. Mahkir huffed. Feels like real progress.

"It's more than zero out of two." Ant closed his fist around the spent gem and pushed himself the rest of the way to his feet, legs unsteady under him for reasons that had nothing to do with the ride still ahead.

"We'll work out the rest of it later. Right now we're already behind." You always say that. Mahkir fell into step beside him without argument, though his tail kept flicking the whole walk back to the horse. Work it out later. Later's where every hard question in this clan goes to die.

"This one's not dying. It's the first real movement we've had since the cave." Ant tucked the spent gem away.

"Whatever it turns out to be, it's a start." It's a start we can't do anything with tonight. Mahkir glanced sideways at him, his voice dropping out of its usual edge for a second. So put it down until we've got room to actually think, and let's go be useful instead.

"Since when do you give advice like that." Since always. You just don't listen most of the time. Mahkir's ears flattened briefly, more amused than annoyed. I'm allowed to be right occasionally. It happens more than you give me credit for. Ant didn't answer that, but he let the silence stand as agreement enough, and the two of them crossed the last stretch of field to where the horse waited, ears pricked toward them.

The ride back went faster than the ride out, or it felt that way, the dark hiding how hard Ant pushed the horse. His hand still ached from where he'd held the gem too tight, and every so often his mind drifted back to the number sitting in his vision, one out of two, refusing to explain itself no matter how many times he turned it over.

Mahkir kept pace beside him without complaint, and for a long stretch neither of them said anything at all, just the sound of hooves and Mahkir's paws hitting the road in a rhythm slightly off from the horse's own. You're thinking too loud, Mahkir said eventually, not looking over. I can hear it from here.

"Just running numbers." Numbers you don't have. Give it a rest until we've got something worth running. Mahkir's tone stayed light, but there was an edge under it, the same one Ant had heard the moment the evolution status first appeared. We'll get there. We always do. The village came into view a little before midnight, fires burning low at its edges where people were still awake and working, a hundred tents and makeshift shelters crowded around the buildings that had stood there long before the clan arrived.

Smoke and horse and turned earth sat over the whole camp, the smell of four hundred people settled somewhere they didn't belong. Ant slowed the horse to a walk for the last stretch, giving both of them a moment to catch their breath before whatever came next, and Mahkir matched the pace without needing to be told.

Someone near the treeline spotted them first, a shout going up, and by the time Ant reined the horse in at the edge of camp Natalia was already walking toward him, Cindermaw a few paces behind her, smoke curling faint off his spine even at rest.

"You made it." She looked him over once, the same assessing look she gave everything, and whatever she found seemed to satisfy her.

"Good timing. We move within the hour." Ant swung down off the horse, legs protesting the whole way, Mahkir already at his side.

"Give me the full picture. Did all two hundred make it here without trouble?"

"Every last one, no losses on the road, no ambushes, nothing worse than a couple of turned ankles and one cart that lost a wheel an hour out." Natalia fell into step beside him, matching his pace without seeming to try.

"No sign the Marigolds have caught on either. No extra patrols, no lights where there shouldn't be any, nothing on the wall that wasn't there yesterday. If they know something's coming, they're not showing it."

"And our people. How's it looking?"

"Tense. Nobody's sleeping much, and I'd rather they didn't try." She said it plainly, no dressing it up.

"But it's the right kind of tense. Nobody's talking about backing out. They're talking about the wall, the timing, who's covering who. That's the tension you want walking into something like this."

"Good." Ant let out a breath he hadn't noticed holding, then didn't quite let the thought go.

"That's the tension from our own people. What about the rest. Half these two hundred weren't with us a year ago. Do they even understand why we're doing this, or are they just following orders because that's what they signed up for?"

"Some of them, no. Not the whole story, not the way you or I would tell it." Natalia didn't soften it, which he appreciated more than he expected to.

"But they understand enough. Marigolds hurt people they've come to care about. That's reason enough for most soldiers, whether or not they know the deeper history behind it."

"And if it isn't enough, halfway through?"

"Then that's what leaders are for. Yours, and mine." She held his gaze a moment.

"Worry about the wall tonight. I'll worry about whether every recruit understands the politics of it."

"Fair enough." Ant nodded once, the concern still sitting with him even as he moved past it.

"Where's Thomas?"

"Here." Thomas emerged from the nearest tent at the sound of his own name, a rolled map under one arm, still moving at the same pace he'd probably kept up for hours.

"I was about to come find you. There's a couple of things about the wall I want to walk through again before we move." He caught Ant's expression partway through and paused.

"You're leading us out." Thomas blinked.

"I'm sorry?"

"When we move. You're at the front." Ant left no room in his voice for it to be anything but settled.

"This whole plan is yours. The gap in the wall, the timing, the reason we're even standing here instead of throwing bodies at a gate. You built it. You should be the one who leads us into it."

"I'm not a fighter, Ant." Thomas stopped, started again, one hand tightening on the rolled map.

"I've never led anyone into anything in my life. I calculate load-bearing weight for a living."

"You calculated this. Every part of it." Ant held his gaze, steady.

"And you're not doing it alone. I'll be right beside you, Natalia too. You're not leading a charge. You're leading us to the place you already know better than anyone else in this camp. Nobody's better suited for that than you are." Thomas looked between them for a long moment, the map still tucked under his arm, and his shoulders came down half an inch.

"All right." He nodded once, sharp.

"Then let's go over the wall one more time. I want everyone knowing exactly where that gap is before we're standing in the dark trying to find it."