Chương 6: Chapter 4 - The Dark

[Basic Pyrokinesis - Level 1: 9/10] It came up again and again in the corner of Karina's vision. Of course it was her fault. Each time she drifted closer to sleep, she would flick her fingers and summon the number back to the forefront, setting her brain alight with the searing orange light, and the possibility behind it. Karina had been in bed for hours. Shortly after coming back from the training grounds, a guard she didn't recognize brought her some bread and admittedly well-made stew for dinner.

Heating the stew with her flames hadn't leveled Pyrokinesis or Firestealer. Did they only level up together? She rolled over. How was she supposed to sleep with this thing hanging over her head? Just like in the training grounds, the magic was a possibility; now it just came with a tempting precipice. She dismissed the interface and rolled onto her side. The blanket twisted around her legs, dragging across skin that no longer hurt. Whatever she'd strained fighting the Karash had recovered while she practiced.

Even her fingers were whole again. She was rested. That was the problem. Rested and lying in a room with nothing to do except remember all the questions she hadn't asked and everything people had refused to answer. Plus, beyond attempting to heat the soup, she couldn't practice in this room. While she seemed ostensibly immune to her fire, Karina was lying on a wooden bed in thin linen sheets. It was hard to imagine a better matchbox.

So there she was, a thousand questions with no way to get answers, being told to sleep when she wasn't tired. Like a damned toddler. The difference was she wanted to sleep as well. Dashun might have answers, Cascad almost certainly would, but even then, how much did she want to say? If she was still treating the 'God' she'd run into as an opponent and everyone here was its servant… Well. She rolled over again, this time facing the book on the table that she still couldn't read.

Dashun had said that he needed to consult the archives to possibly discover information about her class. If anywhere here was going to have answers for Karina—whether regarding pyrokinesis or what Firestealer was all about—it was going to be the archives. Heroes studied spells there. Presumably, someone had considered that people summoned from another world might struggle with the local alphabet. There could be translations. Books written by other heroes. Something with pictures. Something illuminating.

But that was another place she could go tomorrow, on the other side of sleep that wasn't coming. Karina's gaze drifted to the door. Alyssia had said that she wasn't a prisoner, and that she was being kept in the infirmary 'for her safety' in the aftermath of the attack. If it was just for her safety, then nobody should have an issue with her leaving. Karina slipped out of bed and hastily shrugged on the jacket they'd given her, leaving it mostly open and barely covering her shoulders and chest.

Once across the room, she tried the handle. It turned. She was a free woman. Across the hallway, a small lamp rested on the floor, the flame inside sputtering at the end of its wick, lighting the old stones behind it, but very little else. Further down the hall, pale moonlight poured in through the massive hole. Most of the stone here was already old, but at night, in the silence and the drifting light of the moon, the Cathedral seemed more like a ruin than anything else.

Karina took the first steps outside, then paused as her slippers scratched against the flagstone floor. The seconds ticked by as she held her breath, waiting for a sign that she'd been caught. Or 'caught.' As far as she understood, she was allowed to be out here, but she also understood that the second she was found, someone would try to escort her back to bed. Karina pulled the door shut, careful with the handle so the latch wouldn't snap into place, then headed down the hall, careful to avoid dragging her feet.

The cold chill of the night slipped under her open jacket as she headed by the gaping hole in the wall, and a glowing ember in the courtyard below caught her eye. It moved, a handheld lantern. Karina slipped past the opening before it revealed her. While she recognized the first turn out of her bedroom—as Alyssia had taken her that way to the training yards—she wouldn't know where she was going beyond that. There weren't signs pointing to the archive. Even if there were, would she be able to read them?

If nothing else, Karina figured that the archives wouldn't be around the edge of the keep, which meant she turned left at the first fork when the training yards called for a right. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. As soon as she was around the corner, voices.

"Thought you were taking the other stairs."

"Door's sticking again."

"You should tell—""I've already reported it. Not a big deal. Place is a ruin anyway." The first glow from the guard's lantern appeared at the end of the hallway.

"Yeah, well, still our job. Dashun asked for doubles."

"Again? I put in the extra hours on the caravan so I could sleep once we got here." The light stretched across the wall, and the burning center of the lantern drew into view. Karina could have just walked back to her room, but that wouldn't get her any answers. She could have stepped forward and met the guards, but that would just get her escorted back. On the other side of the hall, the door to a dark room was ajar. She stepped inside, easing her foot around something that scraped beneath her sole. A bucket.

Karina caught its handle before it could fall. The voices drew closer.

"Yeah, I get it. I'm thinking of taking a rotation off but—""But they pay well."

"Yeah…" She crouched behind the door, holding the bucket very still. Two sets of footsteps. One stopped. The guard grabbed the door handle as Karina was slightly around the corner, against the wall, and pulled it shut. It fell into place with a click, and the guards continued down the hallway, their conversation lost to the muffling of the wood. Once she was sure they were far enough, Karina set the bucket back down onto the floor and tested the closet handle.

[FATE AVAILABLE: BASIC STEALTH] She stared at the words. That counted? She'd been sneaking. Deliberately. Apparently, that was enough for the System to recognize an interest. Karina focused on the notification. [BASIC STEALTH] [Add Fate?] Yes. [FATE CHANGE UNAVAILABLE] [You must be safe to add or remove Fates.] Well, that was two pieces of information at once. Karina cracked open the door and peeked out into the hallway. The guards were gone; there wasn't even a sign of their lantern light.

[FATE CHANGE UNAVAILABLE] [You must be safe to add or remove Fates.] Outside, a banner flapped in the wind for a moment, then the same breeze kicked up dust in the hallway. Nothing that felt like danger, but perhaps the system understood better than Karina did. Either way, she didn't need a stealth skill to maneuver around the keep; that was what had gotten her the skill in the first place. She slipped out of the room and, after checking either direction, headed further down the hallway.

With the idea of stealth in her head, Karina paid more attention to where she put her feet. Loose grit, the rough cracked edges of flagstone, the dragging of her own slippers. Anything could make noise that could get her caught, or ruin her chances of gaining experience in Basic Stealth. It made the process painfully slow, but it gave Karina time to notice the aspects of the keep she hadn't when distracted by Alyssia, including plaques above some of the doors that had both the arcane writing and simple images.

A cup. A folded blanket. Something that might have been a hand if you squinted at it. She took another left, circling the courtyard below, then a staircase to her right marked with an open book. That was certainly promising. Karina poked her head around the edge of the stairs, peering down into the darkness. There was a simple wooden door at the bottom, with lines of warm light escaping around the seams. She pushed slightly further into the stairway, before a shadow passed in front of the light behind the door.

The movement drew her attention to the space outside the door, where the stairs widened out into a room. A pair of guards, one leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, and a woman working on a ledger at a small, simple table. The standing guard shifted.

"Did she finish?"

"Nearly."

"She said nearly before the watch changed."

"You can go in and tell her." The guard remained where he was. Karina leaned forward slightly. The door was old but well maintained. A metal plate covered the wood around the lock. There were two keyholes, one above the other. Well locked, if nothing else. As if the speech had summoned the reaction, the door cracked and a black-haired woman emerged carrying a book against her chest. Another remained tucked beneath her arm, its cover wrapped in cloth.

"The translation stays here," she said. The seated guard looked up.

"Both copies?"

"The original goes back. The translated copy stays for instruction." She turned the ledger toward her.

"Sign for it." Karina pulled back from her spot at the top of the stairs as the sound of pen against paper covered her movements. That was almost certainly the archive, and she had just said they had translations, but she certainly wasn't getting in without seeing the guards, and the guards certainly weren't seeing her without sending her back to bed. Down the stairs, the woman picked her books up off the table.

"All requests to access the archives must go through the Guardian tomorrow." The Guardian?

"Yes, ma'am."

"I'm busy enough as it is." She sighed.

"Even for those with permission. Contact me before allowing anyone in sections four through twelve, and none of those tomes can be removed from the archive unless it is by me or the Guardian." The woman was going to come up the stairs soon, which didn't give Karina many options. But—if all she needed for her answers tomorrow was permission from this guardian, then she could get her answers in the morning. And now she'd at least know they were coming. The return trip was simpler.

She knew the way and knew the stones. The only time she paused was in front of the hole overlooking the courtyard, where her gaze lingered on the sky. With the fog in her head, she couldn't know what her sky looked like, but she knew this wasn't it. The stars danced a thousand ways, but none of them were the right steps. Alyssia had said it: she'd get used to it. Karina slipped back into her room and sat down on the bed, pushing the rough blanket to the side.

Once she was seated, she swiped her fingers across the air to pull up her Class Menu. Before any of the usual menus appeared, the Fate reasserted itself. [BASIC STEALTH] [Add Fate?] She accepted. [FATE ADDED: BASIC STEALTH] [Level 1] Karina looked at her hands, then toward the door. She didn't feel any stealthier. To test, she took a careful step beside the bed. Silence. She took a less careful one and something beneath the bed clicked against the stone. All right, even with the skill, quiet was still her job.

She sat down and opened the Fate again. There was an option to remove it, alongside the name and level. Safe in here. Unsafe out in the hallway. Was it the latch? The room? Had the guards been too close? That was something worth finding out before she had to change her options in a pinch. At least for right now, though, that was understanding, and understanding was progress. With any luck, that would be enough to quiet her brain.

Tomorrow she should be able to ask about the archives, just another thing on a growing list. Karina lay back and pulled the blanket over herself. [Basic Pyrokinesis - Level 1: 9/10] Still nine.