Chapter 3: Battered and bruised

Amidst the soothing hum of the dagger, I stared in awe as the sanguine runes painted the veil.

Name: Caleb Kane

Race: Human 

Title: One of reviled flesh

Blessing: Weaver

Acclaim: Whisper

Accolades: None

I shifted my gaze to the vibrating dagger.

Silent Scream

Rank: Unsung

Type: Unbound armament

Description: The misericorde is the bedfellow of all soldiers aimlessly roaming the Forgotten lands. This particular one was the weapon of choice for a decorated officer, fighting on behalf of the Layered Empire’s rebel forces. 

Embroidery: Butcher

Effect: Once it draws blood, the dagger grows sharper.

I hummed, “Now that’s better.” 

With a slight touch, I stopped the scintillating dagger and silenced the humming. I barely needed to pull for it to slide out of the crack. 

I turned the dagger around in my hand and studied it carefully. It was light, despite being made entirely out of the same dark metal as Sera’s bindings. The heavy pommel created a nice counterweight for the long blade. It had no decorative parts, except for the floral engraving that swirled together as one on the pommel. Now that I studied it up close, I saw that it depicted tulips in bloom. 

Out of curiosity I pricked my hand with the shiny tip. A small trickle of blood ran down the blade and flowed into the engravings.

“Ouch, that's sharp,” I muttered and pressed the wound to my mouth. The taste of iron and feeling of moisture was more than welcome, despite costing me some pain.

In my hand, the dagger felt ever so slightly lighter. It kept lightening until its weight became non-existent. I watched on with wide eyes as it turned into a black mist and flowed inside me.

Just like with the purple veil, I knew how to will forth the ’accolade’ by instinct. My consciousness slipped to the shape of the dagger resting in my mind. 

Dark mist seeped out of my black arm and formed the rough outline of the dagger, it condensed, growing thicker until the weight of the the blade once more settled in my hand. 

The previously lusterless engravings shone with the ruby glow of blood. I inspected the runes again, a smile blossoming on my face. 

Accolades: Silent Scream

Silent Scream

Rank: Unsung

Type: Bound armament

I drew in a breath of air, satisfied with the little experiment. After a quick listen, I confirmed that the hushed sobs of the jailor still echoed throughout the halls.

“He must have really cared about you, huh?” I asked quietly, and caught a glimpse of myself in the reflective surface of the dagger.

“I sure hope so, we were together for millennia befo…”

I jerked back and tipped over in the chair. The ground knocked the air out of my lungs with a dull thud as the dagger skittered across the floor. It stopped beneath the large painting.

I glanced around the room with blushed cheeks, half expecting to see a small devil laughing itself to death on my shoulder; but Sera was nowhere to be seen. I rubbed eyes with an exasperated sigh and shook my head. “Stupid…” I muttered and staggered over to the dagger. 

As I bent over to it up, the reflection sneered at me with a familiar pair of blazingly red eyes, “To drop a lady and then leave her on the ground! Utterly despicable.”

I blinked a few times and hesitantly picked up the weapon, “… Sera?”

“Who else?!” she scoffed and blew a lock of white hair from out of her eyes.

Her reflection looked nothing like the Sera I knew from the torture chamber. Her skin was still pale as ash, but there was a certain vibrant lustre to it. The grisly wounds that riddled her body were healed, not even a scar remained. 

“Uhm… Why are you…?”

She snickered wickedly and covered her mouth with a hand, “Oh my… Did you not read the contract?”

“Ha-ha. Very funny.” As if there was time to read the contract. 

“Such a pity. I spent a lot of time writing the thing… Almost an eternity,” she sulked and hung her lip. The cutesy act turned out to be more effective when she wasn’t a heap of battered and bruised flesh. 

I stared at her coldly. I was happy she was back, but I wouldn’t let her know. She would ridicule me for it, I could feel it in my bones. I was done wearing my heart on my sleeve. It was what brought me here in the first place. 

She grew visibly uncomfortable at the silence and cleared her throat, “Tough crowd…”

I snorted and spoke sternly, “Well, things will be less tedious with company.”

She smiled toothily, “I’d say.”

“Now that you’re here. How do I get out?”

She twirled around in the reflection and stretched lazily, “I have practically never seen the outside of the bleeding chamber.”

I groaned, “And this… veil?” I nodded at the empty space in the room.

“I cannot say much about that either. What I can tell you is that the veil is woven from solidified magic. Blessings are just one way to utilise it, altered limbs are another,” she smiled and pointed at my arm. 

Just like Sera’s, my arm had blue veins pulsating in a steady rhythm. The veins were thick and close to the skin; a nurse’s wet dream. A violet shimmer escaped them with every heartbeat, the same violet as the veil. 

I flexed my fingers and balled them into a fist. The use of my new arm felt natural, almost more so than my actual one. The fingers were long and slender, not like my other fingers which were of the chubby and short variety. They were unusually dextrous, as if made for tinkering with complexity. 

The wrist opened up to reveal the insides of my flesh through a thin grid of hardened skin. “This is creepy as fuck,” I mumbled and unfurled my fingers. 

Sera grumbled, “Rude…” 

I smiled wryly, “Will I ever be able to see myself in a mirror again?” 

She chuckled, “Of course. I just figured you would rather see my esteemed self.” As she bit off the last word, her form shaped to mirror my own. It still didn’t follow my movements. While looking like me, it was without a doubt Sera, just in my form. 

My curled, dirt blonde locks had grown long enough to fall down to my neck. My previously starved and mangled body had grown fuller, and much paler, but not at all like Sera. If I squinted my eyes I could make out the rough shape of abs. If there was one thing to complain about, it was that I hadn’t grown any taller, or that the round scar marking me as a blood offering hadn’t healed along with the other injuries. 

I sighed and looked away. It didn’t look like me. There was a sort of dissonance that I just couldn’t put my finger on. I rubbed my eyes, “I’m gonna get some rest. It's been a long day.”

Before Sera had any time to retort I dismissed the accolade, and her reflection along with it. 

My heavy eyelids pressed down over my eyes as I scanned the room with a yawn. There was nothing I could use to shut the door. I just had to hope that the jailor would keep on wallowing in self pity, or whatever it was that he felt. 

In normal circumstances I would be too worried to sleep. But, as it turned out, going through a metamorphosis took a toll on not just the body, but the mind too. 

I picked up the chair and slumped down on it. For good measure I kicked off my blood soaked sneakers and put my feet on the desk to get comfortable. It didn't take more than a few seconds before I felt my consciousness fade into the land of the sandman.

…

When I awoke, I was unsure of how much time had passed. The weeping warden had grown quiet – eerily so. I rubbed my throat and yawned, at least he didn’t slit it in my sleep. 

I’d kill for a drink of anything. 

I grabbed my sneakers, the climate had dried them out. As I tied the laces I realised that I should have probably worried about leaving bloody footsteps in my wake. My mental state hadn’t been in peak condition. Luckily neither had the jailor’s. 

I crept up to the door and threw a cautious glance down the corridor. Save for a few paintings it was just as still and empty as before. With a breath of relief I retreated back into the room and summoned the misericord.

“Sleep well?” I asked my sulking companion with a forced smile.

She snorted haughtily and turned her face away from mine. She’d taken on her own form once again. Black mist swirled around her ashy skin like a frilly dress. 

“Right… Well let's get to it,” I declared and stuck the blade into the desk and took a seat. It was high time to do magic. I tried not to show it, but I was excited. Very excited. Who wouldn’t be? Just the thought of being able to throw fireballs made every teenager squirm with delight. At least I’d like to think so.

Turns out magic wasn’t as simple as movies and books make it out to be. 

Navigating the veil was an instinctual certainty, but when it came to finding out how the blessing worked, things became tricky. I prodded at runes with my mind to no avail, then I tried to force the status thing about my blessing expand, also to no avail. Nothing worked like it did with the accolade. 

Sera lazily studied me through the reflection. She summoned a chair from empty space, it mimicked my own, and laid across it with her bare feet gently swinging back and forth over the arm-rest. Obviously, she found the whole watching me staring at the veil thing boring. She hummed the melody of a foreign tune and gazed listlessly at the ceiling.

Hours of intense mind-prodding passed, yet I was no closer to finding my answer than I had been at the start. I slumped back in the chair with a loud groan. Sera had grew impatient from the waiting. She groaned and moaned every time I looked like I was closing in on the answer.

This fucking sucks. Doing magic sucks. 

She regarded me with a deadpan expression and harrumphed, “You are sooo close.” She was upside down on the chair, feet stretching to the roof. 

“Yeah...?” I sighed and drummed my fingers against the table. The lithe dark fingers produced a satisfying sound, much more so than my still human ones. 

My arm. 

I palmed my face with a loud moan, “How could I overlook the most obvious…” 

“I honestly have no idea…” Sera grumbled. 

I swallowed an insult with her name on it, she could have just told me, and let my mind drift to the arm. The wide tubes pulsed to life with a dull violet shimmer. An otherworldly haze seeped out of the grid on my wrist. 

I curled my fingers into a fist and swung my arm through the air. Resistance pressed back as it passed through the veil. What had previously only been a violet haze was now physical. I pinched my fingers together. A soft strand of pale blue light reacted to my touch and separated from the violet veil. The crimson runes hurriedly formed to scribble lines alongside it. 

Magic thread. 

Description: A thread of magic created by a blessed weaver. The threads are ephemeral in nature and can take on both physical and non-physical form. 

“Not many can touch the veil, and few can manipulate it like you will be able to. That I am sure of,” Sera smirked. “Your blessing is derived from mine, after all.”  

I nodded absentmindedly and played around with the string. It had an electrical warmth to it and was oddly pleasing to manipulate. I tied one around Silent Scream and tossed it to the other side of the room, then pulled it back after solidifying the string with a thought. Even as I let the veil fall away from sight, there was a shimmering, pale blue thread stretching from my hand to the weapon. 

I burst into a smile, “I take it back. Magic is cool as shit.” 

Sera raised an eyebrow but didn’t voice her confusion. The blessing might not give me super strength or light speed, but I could touch the very magic itself. Besides, strings had plenty of uses in the hands of someone with too much spare time and a modicum of creativity.

I collected as many threads as I could, and measured each of them against my modest height of 173 centimetres. If I made the strings as tall as myself, I could make five of them. However, if I made them five meters and some change I could create two. I couldn’t create more than six, no matter the length.

“This should be enough to make a difference,” I beamed at Sera. 

She had resumed lazing on the chair as she glanced at me, “If you want to help a spider build its web.”