Chapter 292 -A Path of Shadows
Sebastien
Month 10, Day 3, Sunday 1:00 p.m.
Sebastien spent almost half an hour after Damien left trying to motivate herself to leave her apartment, but her feet stayed planted on the floor as the muscles in her neck and shoulders grew ever-tighter. She had to enforce calm on herself with Newton’s vibrational calming spell before she could force herself to head northward—to the University.
It was time to meet Professor Lacer.
To be honest, she was surprised she’d managed to avoid him this long. He must have been abnormally busy with something else. She could only hope that “something else” wasn’t extensive preparation with his Red Guard compatriots to take down the Raven Queen.
She made her way through the city, but stopped near Waterside Market and paid for a cup of soup from a restaurant to gain entrance to their bathroom. Ignoring the smell of piss spilled on the floor, she hid her light coaster in a corner, formed her shadow into the glyph for “ready” and then “travel”—the signal she and Legion had agreed upon beforehand.
The being who had vowed to serve her with the weight of its existence surged into her shadow, and as soon as she detached the spell, took over. They formed it into the shape of a floating cloak, gently rippling fabric outlining a dark portal that reminded her of the surface of a pond filled with ink.
She had initially thought Legion might be upset about the waste of power, since they were depleting their stores for this, but as soon as she’d explained her plan, they agreed happily, satisfied simply to use their anomalous effect. It reminded her that they were, more or less, an Aberrant, and their biggest desire was to fulfill their purpose. Legion only hinted at her that they also hoped to do more varied magic, some of which they sensed they could do but had never had a chance to explore as their current self.
Sebastien stepped forward into the darkness, and it collapsed to nothing behind her.
Legion was waiting for her on the other side and took her hand immediately. Their form was no longer cracking and shifting with every movement, but there was still some sense of malleability to them, as if they were subtly shifting from one moment to the next, and only if one looked away for a while and then back might they notice the degree of change.
Sebastien looked around curiously, noting the towering walls of white stone that existed in the spirit realm, too. Except these were even larger, almost impossibly tall, and seemed to curve inward as if they might collapse and crush everyone within their boundaries once they grew bored with watching the ants scurrying around beneath them. The spirit realm didn’t necessarily have a sun in its sky—that had nothing to do with time or season, and more to do with what area you were exploring, and could change inexplicably along with the scenery—but the walls still seemed to throw gloomy shadows. Spirit realm beings walked past them, but no one seemed to notice their presence, perhaps because of some influence Legion was exerting.
“Take me back to the apartment,” she told Legion, partly as a test.
As she had worried they might, Legion turned in a circle, frowned thoughtfully, then pointed with supreme confidence in a direction that Sebastien was pretty sure was the opposite of where they needed to go.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “Because the guiding light beacons I left behind are calling to me from over there.” She pointed. The trio of tiny replica journals was a cluster of bright stars in her mind’s eye, and as she had suspected, the barrier of the spirit realm did nothing to disrupt her connection to them.
Legion pinched their chin as if considering deeply, and then, as if they had never had even the slightest inclination otherwise, decisively lifted their arm right next to hers and aimed. “Yes, over there,” they agreed.
Sebastien’s lips parted in surprise at Legion’s audacity, but before she could comment, they had already marched forward, yanking her along.
The scenery changed more quickly than it should have, leaving her dizzy, but she kept one branch of her Will turned toward reinforcing her own mind—her own identity—and managed not to become too disoriented.
When they arrived at the place where the beacon shone through—represented an actual beam of light in the spirit realm—and Legion made a door back to the mundane plane, she couldn’t help but laugh triumphantly. “I can walk through the shadows. Kind of, anyway,” she explained to the nonplussed being. “It feels a little ironic, but also…so satisfying.”
A quick check told her that, according to her pocket watch, only three minutes had passed. She peeked her head out of the ceiling window to confirm the time against a distant bell tower’s massive clock, which she hadn’t checked beforehand, but suggested it had actually been closer to ten minutes. She then performed a quick divination that could track the time based on her own memories, which had picked up clues that she couldn’t consciously remember, and got a third answer: five minutes.
It had taken her over half an hour to travel to the restaurant. “Is it always this fast?” she asked.
Legion, still wearing her shadow, seemed a little confused, even when she showed him her pocket watch. “It takes as long as it takes,” they explained, as if that meant something profound, though she could tell they had no idea and were just making things up. “The trip is probably faster if we walk in a straight line to our destination.”
“Do you have a conceptual grasp of…time?” she asked, squinting at them.
Outrage flared up in Legion and seeped through into Sebastien’s awareness. “Of course I know what time is! I just…don’t have a lot of practice tracking it,” they admitted, embarrassed, but quickly rallied. “But within the spirit realm, those kinds of concepts are malleable. It’s all based on perception. Why do you have that look on your face?”
Sebastien smiled wolfishly. “Because even the spirit realm has rules. And if what you mean by ‘in a straight line’ is ‘with focus and intent, constantly aware of the destination rather than the journey,’ then those rules mean I can tip things in the real world in my favor.”
Legion stared down at her. “I grasp your meaning. But I would caution you, Seeker of Mysteries, never to imagine that the spirit realm is not a real place. It simply works on different principles, the same as the Plane of Fire or Radiance. You should respect it, because if you become careless, it will kill you.”
Sebastien sobered. “That is good advice,” she admitted.
They returned to that little bathroom stall near Waterside Market, Legion peeked through a small hole to make sure it was empty, and then they exited. She retrieved her light-coaster and control of her shadow, then continued to make her way toward the University. As she rode up on one of the single-person transport tubes that wove along the side of the white cliffs, her anxiety began to rise again.
‘Professor Lacer must have told the Red Guard about me, right?’ she fretted. ‘Hite didn’t mention anything to that effect, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t aware of what happened and prepared to act.’ Her second identity as Sebastien Siverling was again proving its worth, in many ways better than any protective spell.
After she had woken up from repairing the damage Professor Lacer caused her and spoken to Oliver, he had sent one of his hidden spies within the University to secretly canvas the white cliff tunnels, disintegrating any blood or hair she’d left behind while fighting. She might have ways to counteract and complicate attempts to use her bodily sheddings for ill, but it would be best if she could keep any more pieces of herself from falling into the hands of her enemies. The cleanup had been a few days belated, but that was no excuse to forgo it entirely.
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When she reached the top, she readied her Will as if she were going to cast the dazzler spell Professor Lacer had taught her, but channeled no magic. This was another secret code between herself and Legion, a reminder to be alert and ready.
Legion sent back a daydream image of a dog guarding the door, sitting proudly upright and scanning the horizon for threats.
Standing before Professor Lacer’s cottage, Sebastien allocated two branches of her Will to enforcing a state of calmness on herself through pretending that nothing was wrong so hard it could force the lie to become fact, while the other held her shadow, ready to attack or escape at a split second’s notice.
She raised her hand and knocked firmly.
Her mentor took a long while to open the door, only to reveal a particularly unkempt beard, bloodshot eyes, and—“Is that blood?” Sebastien blurted. “Did you have a nosebleed?”
Professor Lacer ran a hand over his face as if rubbing away exhaustion, and when he lowered it, the crusted darkness that hadn’t been completely cleared away from his nose and mustache was gone. “No,” he said simply.
They stared at each other for a moment before one side of his mouth quirked up in a mirthless smile. “Are you worried about me, Sebastien?” He turned to walk back inside, leaving the door open for her to enter. “Ah, but your worry is much too little and too late. An old man such as myself might have died in this cabin weeks ago, and no one would have discovered my body, since my only apprentice deemed fit to galavant around without even a notice, let alone a thought to visit me.” He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. “It seems my great knowledge and power are no longer recognized, since my apprentice not only did not fear my wrath, but seems to have no interest in acquiring the secrets and power to carry on my legacy.”
Sebastien slowly closed the door behind herself, trying to fit the tone of his voice and what she knew about Professor Lacer as a person together with the actual content of his words. “Were you…lonely?” she asked tentatively. This seemed absurd, but that’s what she would have taken from these words, if anyone else were saying them.
Professor Lacer poured two cups of black coffee, handed one to her, and took a sip while staring her down over the rim of his mug. “I was much too busy to be lonely.” He let out a scoffing breath. “Who do you think I am?”
She pressed hard with both branches of her Will that were allowing her to seem normal, tilted her head to the side, and smiled wryly. “Someone who is drowning in company but is starved for like-minded companions?” she guessed. “Either that, or you’ve been replaced by an impersonator.”
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously in a way that wasn’t entirely an act. “Tell me something only Thaddeus Lacer would know.”
Professor Lacer’s mug stilled, half lifted, and then rose to cover a smile. “You like to dress in women’s clothing.”
Despite all of her efforts, Sebastien felt the blood drain from her face.
Professor Lacer’s eyes widened slightly, and his smile slipped away. “There is no need to be so anxious about it. Everyone has their fetishes, and I certainly do not give even a single shit about yours. I deduced it after seeing a dress in your bag on that night that you received your anti-divination boon from the Raven Queen.”
Sebastien’s thoughts had frozen and had trouble warming back up again, but she quickly understood what he was saying. “On the night Newton broke? You saw…the clothing in my bag?”
“Indeed. But let me give you some advice, Sebastien. If your secret is revealed at some point in the future, don’t react like you just did. You should boldly admit it and turn the weight of the accusation back upon the other person. You like to dress in women’s clothing at the Silk Door. So what? Let it be known that you look amazing doing it and are so much fun to be with that the courtesans there draw lots to decide who will serve you—you get the idea.” He waved his hand in a lazy circle.
She let out a trembling breath. “I’ll do that.”
He led her into the living area and motioned for her to sit on the wooden chair there, while he took the plush couch. “I could have forced the issue and found you instead, but all of my spare time has been spent on a project that is very difficult to speed up but rather critical.” He set the coffee down on a small table by the side of the couch and rubbed his temples.
“Did that ‘project’ cause your nosebleed?” Sebastien asked. Professor Lacer pretended she hadn’t spoken, and she realized belatedly that perhaps he wasn’t just being stubborn. Perhaps this was one of those things that people outside the Red Guard couldn’t know about. She pressed her lips together.
“Ultimately, it seemed that you were with the Raven Queen, so I concluded that you were likely safe and did not require my aid, allowing me to focus on more critical endeavors. How is she?” Professor Lacer’s hands clenched and relaxed, perhaps an unconscious movement.
“What?”
“How is the Raven Queen doing? I heard she had Will-strain.”
Sebastien swallowed. “Oh. She’s been a bit…indisposed,” she admitted. She was the one who had sent him that letter, after all. She’d thought she was acting normally, but some microexpression or catch in her tone must have given her away, and despite his obvious fatigue, Professor Lacer was as sharp as a razor blade.
“What happened to her? Is she alright?” he asked, his words fast and clipped.
Sebastien had planned out a lie about what happened to her in this identity—some embarrassing foolishness that he would scold her over but would seem too shameful to be false—as well as some lies about the Raven Queen’s behavior that would assuage any worries about her other identity remembering what had been done to her or retrieving her erased memories. But she hadn’t expected Professor Lacer to be so worried, and as she tried to consider whether the fake relationship she’d hinted at between her two identities meant Raven Queen would have confided anything about the cause of her Will-strain in Sebastien Siverling, she hesitated.
And Professor Lacer pounced on that weakness. “Does it have anything to do with what happened to harm you?”
An image flashed in her mind’s eye: his face, red from effort, the veins in his temples swollen with blood, looking down on her as she fought uselessly. The branches of her Will that were pretending that had never happened trembled at this opposing force, and a sudden and horrifying possibility came to mind. ‘He can’t know we’re the same person, right? When he talked about me wearing women’s clothes, that wasn’t purposeful, a cat playing with his prey before the kill, right?’ Because she had suddenly realized that perhaps whatever spell he did to root around in her memories could have allowed him to not only erase and rebuild them, but also to see things he shouldn’t.
The idea left her feeling naked, and bile rose in her throat. She shivered and forcefully swallowed it back down. The light through the window and lamp both seemed suddenly brighter, and her chest literally thumped against her clothing with the force of her heart crashing against the surrounding flesh from the inside. This level of physical response was impossible to hide. He might notice her pupils dilating, her skin flushing or paling, or the pulse at her throat.
She couldn’t tell what had changed in his expression, but something about his face flattened, like the surface of a pool falling still and smooth as the massive predator beneath froze in anticipation. Professor Lacer stood up abruptly and turned away from her, walking toward the small study at the back of his cottage, but turning at the doorway and pacing back to her. “Does it have anything to do with Analyst Hite?” he asked.
Sebastien had taken the few moments that he wasn’t watching to compose herself, and now, she remained totally blank-faced. Her heartbeat even slowed somewhat under the overwhelming pressure of her forced calm, though her blood still sang shrilly of panic.
“Based on your unnatural lack of reaction, you do know that name,” Professor Lacer said.
Sebastien realized she had fallen for his trap, and a chill swept over her like the shadow of the moon eclipsing the sun.
“Did you know that he petitioned to bring you in as a research subject?” he said, taking one lazy step closer like a leopard slowly closing in on its prey. “Of course, he was denied, but the audacity to request that in the first place makes it obvious that the man has lost all sense of boundaries or restraint.” Professor Lacer took another step closer. “Did Hite try to…kidnap you?” He was looming over her, standing while she sat frozen in the chair, his eyes open wide as if to track her every twitch, just waiting for her to slip up again. “Does Hite suspect that you might be able to split your Will?”
Sebastien shook her head rapidly.
“Then, perhaps he wanted you as leverage? Against who? The Raven Queen, or…me?”
A realization she’d had before popped into her mind. ‘People are most likely to believe things they have discovered themselves.’ And so, she allowed some of the hurt and blame she had been suppressing to rise up and filter through to her face. Once she had, it was almost impossible to stop, and she had to focus on not letting the lump in her throat a date burning in her eyes turn into full-on tears.
Professor Lacer’s tone softened. “Did Hite hurt you?”
She ducked her head and spoke in a small voice. “Not much. The Raven Queen protected me. But she…she was already too tired and got Will-strain.”
She heard the creaking sound as he ground his teeth together for a few seconds, but when he spoke, his tone was measured. “Why did you not call on me? Did you lose the coin artifact I gave you?”
She hesitated, then looked up at him again. “Because…Hite is part of the Red Guard. And you’re part of the Red Guard, too.”