Chương 40

You can trust me, Harker. Others…I can only hope. Harker felt for his Stature. Careful.

"What is it?" he asked, and felt no pressure. Adhira's eyes widened.

"You are more removed than I thought." Harker frowned. He waited.

"A Vestige is…it's a natural treasure, but it's nothing like a Descending Blade or Soulsage or even a Primacy Skull. It doesn't aid with Descent or refinement in the slightest, in fact, it might make both of those worse." Fantastic.

"I'm not understanding the appeal here." She waved impatiently.

"I'm getting to it! A Vestige is an impossible condensation of the Sea—some say from the Ninth Depth—one that expands your Scope." Harker wasn't good at faking surprise, so he just frowned harder.

"Expands…? Then your Talents would be—""Altered at a fundamental level, yes!"

"That's incredibly dangerous."

"Of course it is! A Talent cannot live except to risk death at every turn!" Harker worked his jaw. So his Scope had changed. He'd long suspected it, seeing as his access to the Sea had been wrenched open, not to mention his evolved Talent.

"Your Scope is fixed from birth. Everyone knows that."

"It is the limitation we are all born with," Adhira nodded.

"No matter how much you refine your Talent, you can never alter its fundamental footprint in the Infinite Sea. It's the lesson we've been told since infancy—and it's wrong. If you have a Vestige."

"A treasure like that would start a bloodbath," Harker said slowly.

"It'd start wars." Adhira grimaced.

"In the wrong hands it would. But mine—""Aren't?" Harker tilted his head. She bristled.

"I wouldn't use it to slaughter. It's a tool. A means to an end."

"And what of all the others who would come hunting it? Perhaps a Stitcher?"

"Ah. Yes, I suppose its very nature causes strife…but I had nothing to do with your town's attack."

"I didn't think you did. It's just clear that this Vestige is highly sought after. What happens to Vale when the next group of hunters arrives?"

"They won't." She sighed.

"The treasure I'd hoped would grant me an unassailable rank was nowhere to be found."

"Really?"

"If it had, we wouldn't be standing here. I'd have leapt across the sky and landed at the Travelspire in a single bound." Harker looked up, imagining it.

"I'm kidding. Sort of." Adhira picked something off her axe blade and tossed it aside.

"It is a pity, I'll admit. Sejal scoured the northwoods and she is the best tracker I know—she found nothing." She smirked.

"Just you, at the edge of the Drop." Harker grunted and started walking again. Adhira followed, her boots clunking against the stone.

"Thank you for that, by the way. If the Stitcher had found me… I'd rather not think about what might have happened."

"If not us, the Grim Company would have taken you in."

"I'm not sure that's much better." She smirked.

"Not a fan of grizzled mercenaries?"

"Not when they're hunting a legendary treasure and I'm their only lead."

"Then we are of the same mind. Officially the Grim Company was hunting down the Stitcher…but I don't buy it. Neither did Sejal. Companies like theirs go to the highest bidder, and they'd be exactly what I'd send after a treasure, had I the pull." He looked back at her, head tilted. She shrugged, a sardonic twist on her lips.

"Not all nobles are built the same. Any self-respecting mercenary company wouldn't come within a hundred yards of me." That was intriguing, but now wasn't the time to chase it down.

"How did you know to find this supposed Vestige in Vale?"

"Mae Mallova."

"Who's that? Some queen?"

"Hah! She wishes. No, she's an heiress from the Hollow Hold, one that thought my axe would look better in her hands." Harker winced.

"See? We barely know one another and you already understand! You never touch another lady's weapons."

"What happened to her?"

"Two black eyes and an unfashionable haircut. She was lucky—I was aiming for her neck." Never take Adhira's axe. Got it. He adjusted his step, putting a bit more distance between him and the weapon she used like a walking stick.

"So this woman somehow led you to Vale?"

"In a way. I fell afoul of the governesses after that, but in the depths of my punishment I found a way out. A lead pointing toward Vale. So I left the Hollow Hold and followed it." If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Must have been some lead."

"Sejal didn't think so…at least, not until we started feeling the waves. They extended out for dozens of miles, subtle but potent; a map for those that could listen." Harker hadn't felt a thing until he'd nearly been on top of the Vestige.

"Why not follow the waves still?"

"It stopped the night your town was attacked. The waves were getting stronger and stronger, then…nothing."

"When the Stitcher attacked."

"True. It's possible—if horrifying—that this was all a trap of that emaciated monster."

"Or he got the treasure," Harker suggested. Adhira shuddered.

"No. If he had, we'd all be dead already." Harker couldn't help but agree. The Stitcher had been terrifying enough just with his horde of Illwrought—if he'd somehow expanded his Scope for all of his stolen Talents…the entire isle would have been in danger.

"So you didn't come out here to best the weak locals…but to enhance yourself."

"Yes."

"And it didn't work." She pursed her lips.

"No. It didn't." Harker nodded.

"Alright then." She stopped and he walked on by.

"Have I gotten your approval, Master Shoalborn?"

"You didn't lie when you could have," he said without glancing back.

"That's all I need." He said nothing more on the subject and Adhira soon fell in beside him. A comfortable silence enveloped them as the wind kept cutting across the trail. They kept climbing, each step burning a little deeper in his thighs. Harker wiped his brow, banishing the annoyance that crept into him whenever he saw Adhira ascend a crag-faced stone with all the grace of a mountain goat. Instead, he grit his teeth and struggled after.

Their chat and the difficulty of the trail worked in tandem to drive his thoughts away, but they returned eventually. Soon Harker's mind was teeming with plans for training his Talent and for putting to use all the coin he was set to earn. Once they'd entered a city, he'd have enough to buy his own farm back home… and perhaps it would be enough to afford some niceties in the Spire. So long as he could make it into the top 100, at least. Harker pulled up his Ordeal progress.

It flowed easier than ever, not even requiring his Talent any longer. Ordeals In Progress… The Ordeal of Deep Lantern - The Trial Of Harmony - 1% > 2% The Ordeal of Drowning Sky - The Trial Of Vigilance - 9% > 10% The Ordeal of Mist and Foam - The Trial Of Stillness - 15% > 16% The Ordeal of Siren's Undertow - The Trial Of Judgment - 3% > 5% Over half of his Ordeals hadn't moved an inch. The rest had climbed by the smallest of margins. He'd fought a ripperweed!

Dodged attacks that would have crippled if not murdered his previous self. Yet all he'd earned was a single percentage point. What was he doing wrong? He cleared his throat.

"Adhira. What did the Hollow Hold say about the Ordeals?"

"Little enough. Hints, like I said. Too much information ruins it, they said." Of course.

"What sort of hints?""'Be bold! Be daring! Master the Ordeal, do not let it master you.' That sort of thing."

"Push yourself."

"Exactly. Enough of those and you'd be a fool not to see the pattern. They want us to fight to the very edge, to prove ourselves, and our schools, worthy of the Spires' attention. Strict governesses aside, it…it wasn't too bad a place." Harker watched the girl. She looked distant, as if she saw something miles off.

"I imagine leaving the Hollow Hold cost you." Adhira shrugged and that faroff look vanished.

"Nothing I wasn't willing to give up." Sure. Just every advantage that had been handed to you on a platter.

"Wouldn't you have gotten into the Spires easier if you'd stayed?"

"No. They offered us training in the core classes the Spire usually teaches, but all potential Aspirants must take the same Ordeal…and every one of my classmates would have gone back home before taking their mark."

"But if they'd stayed, wouldn't the challenge of it push their rank higher?" She raised an eyebrow.

"There's challenge, and then there's suicide." Challenge, huh? Harker's stomach turned, but his pulse pounded in his ears, and his hands clenched involuntarily. It was time for him to face real danger. He had to find a fight. Stillwater wanted to bite something. It wasn't the creeping cold as the day wore on, or the acid that had nearly splashed his shoes. It wasn't even the blighted trek up the drowning mountain. It was the Bargain.

So much of his Stature got caught up in that boy's scheme that his scales crawled with it. Worse still was the girl. Shorter than the giant boy, but not short enough to be properly sized, she was also too strong. Her Talent pulled at the Tide with her every step. Eddies brushed against Stillwater, constant and chafing as silt between his toes. The boy though. Stillwater sucked at his teeth, trying to dislodge the furry thing he'd scooped out of the forest. It tasted terrible. Sour. The boy…

He eyed his irritatingly wide pack. Despite it all, something about him was calming. Stillwater couldn't see his soul, but he could peer into the Sea easily enough. It raged around him. A storm of mountainous waves and scouring winds, but the boy was unaffected. He stood in the eye… and was too weak to see it. Pathetic… and so very curious. Stillwater groaned, dragging a hand down his face. The pain helped him focus. This was a mire of his own making.

When he'd slipped out of the Gallant that day, he'd had everything planned out. Shadow the child, drive him into misery, and at his weakest, offer him a way out. Simple. A task he'd performed thousands of times across his years. He'd just wanted to borrow a human soul for a while! He'd have given it back. More or less intact. A small price for others to pay to elevate Stillwater to the heights he'd been denied. My renewal was at hand! My glory! Yet now… Now he trailed in the wake of a contradiction.

A human with Stature. A weak Talent that could somehow earn endless access to the Sea. Unable to refine, yet he grew stronger by the day. Not in might, but in finesse. Stillwater had watched him closely, waiting for him to slip up and tell a lie, to shatter his own Stature—yet all he'd done was practice. The boy was uncannily good at identifying his own weaknesses and iterating solutions. His mind was as flexible and keen as watersteel. Stillwater admitted a curiosity for the boy.

He'd even allowed him to view his tributaries, thinking little of it—the boy's weak Talent couldn't penetrate the truth, and even if it could, he couldn't possibly do anything with the knowledge. Without preamble, the boy had gone and cut his own tributaries… one's that were eerily similar. And he didn't die. That part still flummoxed Stillwater. The Gilken had of course been terrified that their Bargain would sour and the boy would perish.

By the time he'd realized what Harker was doing, it was too late to stop him. So Stillwater had stayed up, pacing around the child, dreading the moment when he'd sink too far to follow. Then… he'd woken up. Complete. Stillwater had feigned sleep, but couldn't for long. He couldn't believe it. The Gilken had been alive a long time, and he'd never seen a human take to such things. There was a strangeness about Harker Shoalborn, and it kept Stillwater's eye on his back for hours after.

Unsurprisingly, the boy's Talent was more free than ever. The flow of his Water, untempered as it may be, was decidedly strong. Too strong for his meager Sovereign Sight. A perception Talent that saw far too much. The fight with the ripperweed was illuminating, too. Stillwater could sail through the holes in his offensive capabilities, but the boy was becoming adept at evasion. He was growing. Fast. And that meant his uses were growing too.

Already, Stillwater had reinforced his Stature twice over from the Bargains he'd laid in Creston. How much more could he get from this Academy? He licked his lips. Perhaps I can withstand these annoying humans for a little bit longer.