Chapter 50: New Accommodations.
“Wasn’t me this time,” Ren said again, still frozen mid-knock. It seemed it didn’t matter how the girl herself acted. Doors around her simply had a way of destroying themselves. There were [Passives] like this during my time. This girl’s was rather unique.
Sol chirped from my chest. It was a small, satisfied sound. It seemed Sol had sneezed herself awake. At least she hadn’t burned down the entire door, just a…very sizable chunk of it.
“What,” Ren said slowly, lowering her hand, “is that.”
“This is Solara. She is my familiar, the great steed I said she would one day be. She is not to be touched.”
Ren opened the door and stepped inside. She closed the door behind her. I saw now that she was carrying some kind of brown bag in one hand. The girl set it down on the ground. Ren took a few steps toward us. It seemed the girl had not heard my warning, for her hand was already reaching towards Sol. Sol’s four wings flared wide and she screeched. Ren yanked her hand back just before the beak found her fingers. “She bites?!”
“She does,” I said. “She bites those unworthy of her. It seems she has made her decision, and found you wanting.”
Sol settled against my chest and puffed with satisfaction. She watched Ren with one golden eye. Ren stared back, rubbing her almost-bitten fingers. Her expression shifted from shock to something brighter. “She’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” Ren breathed. “What is she? Four wings? Seriously? And those black ones are…oooh.”
I permitted this assessment. Ren reached again. This time she moved slowly and with exaggerated care. Her fingers inched forward. Sol watched her come. She let the hand get within an inch of her feathers. Then she turned and bit the air where the fingers had been. Ren pulled back. “Okay, she really does bite.”
“I did warn you. She is exercising great restraint. You did see what she did to the door.”
Ren huffed. “Yeah, but I thought she’d warm up to me! Animals always warm up to me!”
“She is not an animal. She is a great steed. No, she is the greatest steed. There is a considerable difference.”
Ren tried a third time. Sol did not even bother with a warning. She simply turned her back to the girl, tucked her wings, and closed her eyes. “This is so unfair,” Ren muttered, slumping against the wall. “She won’t even look at me!
“She looked at you. She simply found you wanting.” I corrected. “Why are you even here?” I asked. “Is something wrong with the boy? What Ash and I did should be-”
“No! No, nothing like that!” Ren said quickly. She pointed back at the pouch she had deposited on the floor. “I was just walking outside when Ash ran into me. She said something about needing ‘food for the egg’ and then she ran off! I didn’t even have time to ask. By the Divine she runs fast! So….” Ren shrugged. She stepped back and picked up the pouch. “I figured I could get some.”
“You got…food?” I asked. “Why? From where? How?”
Ren’s face went a shade of pink. A wisp of flame shot up her arm and died. “There are ways.” She said. “If one is willing and knows how to break into the beast hall when the Mistress is asleep.” She said this second part very quickly. In a much lower voice I barely heard.
I stared at her. “And why would you do such a thing?”
Ren’s face deepened from a pink to a light shade of red. “Do you want it or not?!”
“Very well, you may lay out your offerings before her. I will see their worth for myself.” I would have folded my arms, but it might have disturbed Sol.
Ren let out a breath as she reached into the pouch. She pulled out a handful of oddly shaped stones, each a different color. I saw green, red, blue, purple, and violet. She laid them out in a row on the floor.
“And just what, pray tell,” I said. “Are these?”
“Essence stones!” Ren said. “Familiars love this kind of thing like you wouldn’t believe.”
Sol, for her part, hadn’t even turned to regard her offerings. I rose and stepped forward, before gently lowering the bird to the ground. Sol rose, chirped, and turned to regard the offerings at last. Her head twitched. First it twitched right, then left. She hopped away from my cupped hands and waddled over to the first stone. The red one.
“She finds your offering wanting.” I said.
“Shh…she’ll bite. Just watch.” Ren said. The girl was on her hands and knees, leaning forward towards Sol. Any more, and she might fall flat on her face.
Sol let out a chirp. A loud chirp. She smacked her beak into the first stone. Then, her beak opened. Orange and yellow flame poured out, incinerating the first stone. When the fire died, there was nothing left but ash.
“Hey! Do you have any idea how expensive those are!” Ren said. “Not that I’m paying for them but still!”
Sol for her part, was already waddling over to the green stone next. I suspected this offering would not meet a kinder fate. “Oh no you don’t!” Ren yelled, scooping up the stones and hurriedly shoving them in the bag. “You can eat them, but I didn’t steal these just so you could burn ‘em!”
Sol let out something that sounded remarkably like a huff. Then she turned and regarded me, before letting out another chirp. Did she…want me to raise her again, or was she asking for food? I did not know.
The door opened, Ash stepped inside. The Hero was breathing hard, and carrying a cloth bundle from the kitchens. She looked at us, looked at the bundle in her own hands, and then looked at Sol. “Sorry I’m late. It’s…it’s hard to get something this late. Has she eaten yet or….”
“She has not. Your effort was not in vain.” I said. I looked to Ren. “All she has done is use more of her energy dealing with the paltry tribute laid out in front of her.”
Ren grumbled something under her breath. Something a minion surely shouldn’t say before their Queen. Ash nodded slowly as she approached Sol, got down on her knees, and reached into the bundle. The Hero set out strips of raw meat, bread, and some dried fish. Sol inspected each offering with all the imperiousness of a Queen. Ash picked up the bread first, and slowly moved it towards her.
Sol rejected the bread by turning her back on it. The dried fish received a look of contempt. It had to be that, at least. Ash held out the strip of raw meat last. Sol regarded it, regarded Ash, and then chirped. She did not eat from Ash’s hand. Ash nodded slowly, and set the meat on the ground. We were all leaning close now. I did not know when I had leaned.
Sol sniffed at the food, but she did not eat. It was a marked improvement from the insult she’d felt from those ‘Essence Stones’, but it was not enough. "What's wrong with her?" Ren asked. "Is she sick?"
"She was born an hour ago," Ash said. "I have no idea. She looks healthy to me."
Sol chirped. She looked at the meat, then up at me. Then at my left arm. She chirped. Confused, I reached for her. She pecked at my wrist, right where the Cradle's fake green Line sat against my skin. She pecked again, harder. "Ow. What are you-"
She pecked a third time and chirped so loudly it echoed off the stone walls. Then she looked at the meat. Then at my arm. Then at the meat again. Could it be? Something clicked.
I picked up the meat and let the Cradle's white warmth seep through my fingers into the flesh. It was a small thing, just the tiniest bit of Essence that bathed the meat in white fire. It didn’t seem to do much of anything. There was no hollow in a piece of meat for my power to fill. Still, I reached it back out towards her. Sol's head snapped toward it immediately. She chirped once, lunged, and devoured the piece in three regal bites.
She looked up at me and chirped for more."She…she will only eat things you do…that to?" Ren asked, staring. "That’s…very strange. And she…told you. I’m not just seeing things right. You all saw that, right?!" Her voice had obvious surprise to it.
"She is my familiar," I said, as though this explained everything. It did not explain anything.
Ren nodded slowly. Her Sigil flickered as she picked up another strip and channelled her own fire into it. The meat sizzled faintly in her palm. She held it out toward Sol with obvious excitement.
Sol looked at the offering. She looked at Ren. She knocked it out of Ren’s hand with one black wing and returned her gaze to me. “Are you serious?!” Ren cried out. “I literally just cooked it for you! That’s way more effort than whatever she did!”
Sol chirped. I was quietly proud. Ash tried next, without using any of her powers. She held a strip out for her. Sol regarded her for a long moment. Then she hopped forward, snatched the meat from Ash’s fingers, and retreated towards me, holding it out. I bathed it in white fire, and handed it back to her. Sol ate the strip with great satisfaction.
Ren’s mouth fell open. “Hey you were way less rude with her! This is bullshit! It’s…it’s discrimination!”
“Perhaps she senses something in Ash that she does not sense in you,” I offered.
“Like what?!”
“Composure? Sense? Goodness? There are many things. Even I will have trouble finding the exact cause.”
Ren made a sound. Ash, to her credit, bit down on whatever smile was forming. Sol finished her meat, chirped once at Ash. She finally settled and chirped once, before lying flat again.“This isn’t over,” Ren said, pointing at Sol. “You and me. We’re going to be friends. I’m going to win you over.”
Sol yawned. The faint glow at the back of her throat made Ren take a half step back.
An Inker arrived not long after, one I had never seen before. The man had a reedy build, a hooked nose, and only the tiniest clump of hair covering his bald head. A blue sigil covered the length of his right arm. He had been pacing the hallway outside. He had seen the door, seen the hole in the door, and had stepped inside. The man’s jaw was set.
His gaze found Sol -who I had set on the bed- immediately. His face cycled through several expressions, none of them pleasant. “I see an unregistered beast,” he said. “In student quarters.”
Sol hissed at him from the pillow. From what was her pillow, I had decided. Sol’s hiss was a thin sound, and it was the most threatening noise I had ever heard from something that weighed nothing. “She is mine,” I said. “That should be enough, for you.”
The man looked from me to Ash to Ren, then back to me. “There has been no registration. There has been no classification, and no approval from the Beast Hall, as far as I remember.” He stepped further into the room. “You two are the new Consecrated, yes? Special students or not, the protocol for such matters is clear. Unclassified creatures are to be surrendered to the handlers for assessment. You will hand it over. You will be welcome to visit it in the beast hall, if it is deemed safe.”
Ash had stepped in front of me. That was almost not a surprise now. Ren had stepped next to her, that was a surprise. “Master Caleb, she has only just hatched. There has been no time to register her yet.” Ren said. Her voice was remarkably low, given what I knew of her.
Caleb then, that was the man’s name. He glanced at Ren, then back at Sol. “It does not matter. She will be taken and even then she will not stay here in-”
“No.” I said.
“Do you think this is a request?” The man’s mark pulsed on his forearm. “You are not permitted bonded creatures within student quarters. The risk alone-”
He stepped forward. He tried to reach past Ash, and towards the pillow. Ash grabbed his arm with her right, even as she raised her left. I moved before he had finished the step. My body placed itself between his hand and the pillow, and the Requiem hummed cold across my right arm.
“If you think you can take her from this room,” I said, and my voice was very quiet, “then you may try. I encourage it, Inker. It has been a long day, and I find myself in need of a diversion.”
“She has said no.” Ash said, her voice was almost colder than my own. I could not see her face. “I would suggest you listen to her.”
The room was very still. Ren was staring at us with her mouth open. “You are at a higher stage than us,” I said. “If you believe that is enough….”
The man’s Sigil dimmed. He slowly pulled his arm back as Ash let go of him. His jaw worked, once. “I am reporting this,” he said, practically storming out.
Sol chirped after him. It sounded distinctly like a farewell.
The Archon came to us in the middle of the night. It only took ten minutes from when the other Inker had left. Ren had left right after he did. She said she had been breaking curfew, and that hopefully the Inker would be too angry over us to remember. I did not even know there had been a curfew. Ren had tried to touch Sol again before she left. Sol had tried to bite her fingers.
The Archon came to our room with his hands clasped behind his back and no soldiers at his side. He stepped through the ruined door, and said nothing about it. He looked at the ruins of one of the beds and quirked an eyebrow, but said nothing about that either. “May I see her? And my congratulations.” he said.
I did not reach for Sol. The Archon waited from where he stood. Sol, from her perch on the pillow, regarded the old man. She puffed her feathers, turned her back to him, and began grooming one of her black wings. The Archon laughed. “She has strong opinions for her age.”
“She has taste.” I said.
He studied Sol from the distance she had imposed. His eyes were careful, moving over the four wings, the gold-and-black plumage. “I must be frank with you,” the Archon said. “I have studied beasts for some years now I have never seen a creature like this. Not in the records, not in the catalogues, not in any text I have read.” He paused. “The egg was strange enough, but what came from it is stranger still. And it seems she is rather…gifted. Much like you two. There will be those who wish to examine her. Many scholars and researchers would.”
“Then they may wish from a distance,” I said. “Preferably a great one. She is not a curiosity.”
“I did not suggest she was.”
“You mentioned it, and mentioning is the first step toward suggesting, and suggesting is the first step toward demanding.”
The Archon inclined his head. The gesture was small, and I found it harder to dismiss than Inker Caleb’s bluster. “The concern,” he said, “is practical. She breathes...strong fire. These are student quarters. Other students sleep within thirty paces of this room.” He glanced at the hole in the door. “I do suspect her flame would have eaten through most of these walls as surely as it did the door.”
I said nothing. He was not wrong, though I was surprised he had realized that much.
“What do you propose?” Ash asked. She had stepped in front of me again, just like she had before. I was noticing it more and more now. I did not disapprove.
“She stays with me,” I said before the Archon could say a word. “There will be no negotiation on that front. I have seen this ‘beast hall’ of yours, and I found it wanting. She will not stay there.”
The Archon regarded us. “What about classes? Which, I am told, you two have taken none of.” He looked from Ash to me. “When you do eventually take them, as you should have already….” He clasped his arms. “Keep her in the beast halls for that period. A few hours, every day. Surely you can both agree that much is reasonable.”
Ash and I looked at each other. It was reasonable. Damn it. Sol had all the indignity of a Queen, and while she had not burned Ren to fine ash, I could not say the same for any other fool student she might see. “Very well.” I said. “I will not bring her to classes. And during that time, she will be given your finest accommodations.”
The Archon’s lips quirked up. “I will see what I can do. I will have Mistress Hestia treat her well.”
Sol let out a huff, as if she had understood every word, and was demanding he do just that. The Archon considered for a time. His gaze travelled from us, to the walls, to the door. “There is a ground-floor chamber near the Beast Hall’s outer wall,” he said. “It has Essence reinforced walls, and a hearth. The window is large enough that, in time, she could come and go as she pleases.” He paused. “The room is smaller than this one, though I suspect that matters less than the alternative.”
I waited for the rest. “I ask that you check in with Master Hestia from time to time, when she asks. Just enough that we can monitor the bird’s growth and ensure her health. For her sake, not ours.”
Every word of this was reasonable. Every word still annoyed me. “Fine,” I said.
"Furthermore," the Archon added, his tone mild, "you will attend the foundational Beast Taming classes. If she is to remain uncaged among students, the academy must be assured you can tame and control her."
I stared at him. Tame? Control? I had already tamed her. She was my familiar, after all. Still, I could prove as much to these young lived mortals. "Fine," I said, and this time the word tasted bitter. Sol chirped once from atop the pillow. I chose to interpret this as approval.
“And lastly….” The Archon looked between us. “You will attend at least some of the classes available to those at Line. If you find them wanting, that is fine. I am told you haven’t even tried them. That is foolish. The two of you might not have much time. You would both agree with this, I hope? Since you are familiar with Ren, perhaps Edda will be able to guide you here.”
Ash and I shared a look. It had been easy to forget, but this was a place of learning. And we had been doing precious little of it. “We will.” It was Ash who answered this time.
We were moved within the hour. The new room was cold. It sat at the end of a corridor I had not walked before, or if I did, I certainly did not remember. The stone floor was bare. There were two narrow beds, a small table, a single large window set high in the wall. A hearth, unlit, almost directly between the two beds, against the wall.
Ash looked at the bed. She looked at me. I stepped forward, held out my arm. Wisps of black flame trailing from my right, reached the bed. It took seconds to turn it into ash. Neither Ash nor I said a word. She still smiled, and perhaps I did too. We moved over to the only bed in the room.
I set Sol’s pillow beside the hearth first. Then I moved it two inches to the left, where the draft from the window would not reach. I moved Sol’s pillow one inch to the right. “Lys.” I looked up. Ash was watching me from the bed. “The pillow is fine.”
“It was not positioned correctly.”
“It’s been positioned four times.”
I moved it half an inch more and did not dignify her with a response.
Sol had taken to exploring the new room. She hopped from the pillow to the floor, from the floor to the edge of the hearth, from the hearth to the ash-ey ruins of the bed. She then attempted the table. All four wings spread for balance as she made the jump. Surprisingly, she barely made it, her talons scrabbling on the surface for a moment before she steadied. She stood on the table and surveyed the room from this new vantage point.
“She surveys her domain,” I said.
“I think she’s just looking at the hearth. It beats looking at a lantern, at any rate.”
“She surveys her domain.” This time, I was sure I was right.
I knelt before the hearth. There was kindling already stacked. Martha had taught me how to light a fire using some kind of…rectangular device people used. I found one here, next to the hearth.
I picked it, channeled Essence. It poured out a wisp of flame, and it caught the kindling. I leaned close and blew, slow and steady. The flame caught and spread. I did not look at Ash. “Not a word,” I said.
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“Your face is saying things again.”
Sol had abandoned the table the moment the fire caught. She half-fell and half-glided to the floor, almost falling on her face. Then, she hopped across the floor toward the hearth. The firelight found her golden feathers and turned them brilliant. The dark ones drank in the light. She settled onto her pillow, tucked all four wings against her sides, and let out a trill so low and content that it barely qualified as sound. She was, I supposed, home.
The hearth crackled softly. It cast warm light across the stone floor, across Sol’s pillow. Her breathing was slow and even.
Ash was waiting for me on the bed. I moved to join her. Her hand found mine, and I did not push it away. She was asleep quickly, as she always was. The Ember Core hummed beneath my ribs. The pain was there, as it always was. As it always would be. Tonight, it sat quieter than most nights. I had hardly felt it over the last few hours.
I turned and reached over from the bed. My hand came to rest on the edge of the pillow. Sol shifted in her sleep. One small black wing extended, just enough to brush my fingers. She pressed against them and settled.
The room was bare and cold and nothing like a throne room. It was enough. I closed my eyes. Sol’s warmth found me through my fingertips, and the hum beneath my ribs did not keep me from sleep.