Finding Wolves

(9:3:6)

He had a headache.

“Well, it looks like you’re quite the popular one.”

Maybe an external one. Seih took a moment before responding to eye Hafest carefully, noting the glint in his eye and the too-perfect edges of his smile, pushing away a flicker of an impulse that fluttered away before he could figure out what it was. Thankfully. “I’d call it ‘busy’, myself.”

“The implication being that the rest of us do nothing all day, of course.” The man waved his hand airily, walking just a little too close beside him. “I suppose you think you’re doing the world a wonderful service by diverting more Light scalelets to the Pillars, not to mention commissioning more to be placed in whatever ridiculously remote location comes to mind.”

Seih kept his expression neutral, allowing his eyes to narrow only slightly, and shoved aside the faintest of whispers sneering in the back of his head. “Would you rather do nothing and have the Drillers overrun us?”

“You’re assuming they ever manage to get this far.” Hafest cocked an eyebrow. “You seem to forget that Petrah has an army standing by to move in the moment Loh digs its collective voice out of its stubborn throat and calls for help. And that with our good relations to both Petrah and Arathnea—especially Arathnea—all we would ever have to do is simply sit back to enjoy the lights.”

“Neither of them are all-powerful,” he countered, casting a brief glance at Hafest’s silent bodyguard, the lavender-haired Divination staring resolutely ahead with yellow eyes. “With the Drillers’ new strategies and abilities, they could potentially overrun us even with their help.”

“Supposed new abilities.” The man huffed out a short breath, a smile playing at his lips. “They’re only winning in Loh because of Aphox’s—and their own—incompetence.”

“Harsh words for people more battle-ready than our own,” he mused.

“Oh Domini Seih.” Hafest shook his head, placing what he’d probably meant as a fatherly hand on Seih’s shoulder, but felt more like a patronising threat crawling at his skin. “We, the people of Firemount, are councillors and advisers, leaders of the civilised world in the highest forms of culture and technology. To fight is not for us.”

The man flicked his fingers away as Seih turned his shoulder deliberately from the touch, continuing, “Even to supply them with our resources is a degradation of all we stand for. It turns us into nothing more than a supplier for the war machine—a mere cart. When our people need strength and resolve and leadership, here we are pledging to turn ourselves into a factory for scalelets and conduit production.”

“You should have offered your speech to the rest of the council, not me.” Seih halted, turning and meeting Hafest’s eyes with a firm stare. “If you’re trying to win me over, it won’t work. I’ve already laid out plans. I’ve spoken with the crystal growers. If you want to make an objection, you’ll have to bring it up with the Hand.”

He turned and lengthened his stride, gesturing for Voice to follow—not that the Divination was ever more than a step behind, just like Hafest’s own—and ignored the seething shadow in the other councillor’s gaze at being dismissed so abruptly. It wasn’t the best move to make, if he wanted to keep in the other Domini’s graces, but he didn’t have the time nor the inclination to listen to more of his talk on national pride and cultural identity.

Especially not with the ache pounding lightly in the back of his skull. Minor side-effects. Really. Fighting off the half-heard whispers at the edges of his consciousness and feeling half as if his skin was attempting to crawl off for the first couple of hours didn’t feel minor.

“Your little project is pointless, you know,” the other called after him, a false sense of tired exasperation clinging to his words, the faintest hint of a snake’s bite, beneath, crawling across his soul. “The Shield of Light is already as strong as it will ever be. You’re only protecting the remote villages that would be better served evacuating to the city, in your little worst-case scenario.”

He didn’t bother to reply. There was no telling if the Light Shield could even hold them back. It certainly wasn’t in Loh.

You knew that. You were told that before you even brought it up to the Hand. And yet you went ahead anyway.

He pushed away the ghostly sense of oil sliding across the surface of his soul and set his jaw. The Light Shield was more powerful than the shrines in Loh. Shrines which held only a fragment of the Light contained within a single Pillar. It was a reasonable move to make.

Barely a few strides down the hall, he abruptly became aware of someone falling into step next to him, Tambo giving him a sly glance as his gaze twitched over. “You really have been doing your best to step all over his little political toes, haven’t you?” He threw a glance over his shoulder, lip curling into a smile. “Look at him, he’s almost ready to spit fire.”

“He can roar all he wants. I’m not stopping him.” He didn’t look back.

Tambo’s eyes stayed on him for an almost uncomfortably long moment, in the corner of his vision. “All this busyness must be keeping you up late.”

“And council meetings have me up early.”

“Write me a ballad on it,” the other groaned, stretching his arms dramatically to flop them behind his neck. “It takes me nearly an hour to travel the gondolier up and down again from the Crags. So much time wasted for these little reassurance demonstrations.”

He sighed. “They’re more than just that.”

“Oh, yes, of course, I forgot the deep pondering on the meaning of what it is to be part of the very fabric of life in its ultimate form: boredom.” The man twirled his finger idly. “But I’ll add my support anyway. Never did like Hafest much. He’s too much of a... tournament type.”

“That’s what you came to tell me?” He glanced at him. “I thought you were just being a conversationalist.”

Tambo huffed a laugh, moving away with a flowing Petrahn-style salute. “Hardly. I am in the business of politics for a reason, you know.”

The man paused in his exit, raising a finger and looking over his shoulder, offering a half-lidded smirk shadowed by the cast of the Light stones framing the archway that branched off the main corridor. “Oh, and Seih? Be careful where you look. Some experiences can leave a bad impression on a man.”

Seih watched him leave, hands rigid at his sides.

“What did he mean, sir?”

He nearly startled as Voice spoke up, flicking a glance at the Divination’s unwavering silver eyes. “It’s nothing.”

Apart from the fact that Tambo somehow knew. The pulse of his headache throbbed at the back of his skull, a drum beating to the tune of memories he’d rather not drag up, and something he’d rather never do again.

It’s nothing.

(A few hours earlier)

It hadn’t been nothing.

When he walked into the depths of the Archive—a space that dwarfed the physical library in Firemount’s heart, with shelves upon shelves in a labyrinth of collected knowledge and recordings imprisoned within asymmetrical, nonsensical colonnades carved with the ever-present vine patterns—he didn’t know what he was looking for. Didn’t know what he expected to find.

A silent, hulking soulwalker, who spent half a minute slowly appraising him after he gave his request, only deepened the pit in his stomach. The dimness of the place itself, lit only by twinkling spheres floating on dark, dusty shelves, had already opened it wide. An entire archive of experiences. Of pieces of others’ souls, gathered and formed into memories that could be relived by people who had never held them. Without a Divination to play it back as just moving images with sound....

It had been illegal to consume them this way, once. For good reason.

He should have just used Voice.

The shelves flowed, shuffling and reorganising, and his guide floated up to pull a flickering glow from its place, handing it to him with an expressionless face.

He hesitated, holding it on his palm, almost feeling his veins crawl. |Just one?|

Heavy eyebrows slowly rose. |Manage that one, and I give you more.|

He closed his eyes, curling his fingers around the slickness of what he imagined a water droplet would feel like if it could be kept from spilling. |What are its contents?|

|Fight with the Dark-kind in Loh. Ends before death.|

He shouldn’t have. He should have left it. When he steeled himself and breathed it in, he didn’t know what to expect. He didn’t know what he expected.

Plunging into a world of darkness and chaos, jaws lined with razor-sharp teeth opening in front of him, wasn’t it.

Neither was the stab of a blade between his ribs.