The Cat's Bait

Tia’s voice wavered as she found her words again.
“If… if I go to the Arcanum, would I be allowed to bring others? I don’t want to go alone. Corin, and–” she hesitated, a smile tugging weakly at the corners of her lips, “–and Mystikos too. They’ve both been with me through so much. I’d trust them anywhere.”

The high priest regarded her with a gaze that seemed to strip the layers of fear from her until only the raw core remained. Then, he gave the smallest nod.
“The path is yours to walk. And if your heart tells you to walk it with others, then so it should be. I will not bar such a thing.”

Tia exhaled slowly, shoulders sagging with relief. “Thank you. For… listening. For not condemning me.”

The priest’s expression softened – he almost seemed younger in that light. “Child,” he said gently, “the gods did not give us minds and hearts so that we would use them only to judge. You are not a heretic. You are… possibility made flesh. Perhaps you are meant to change this world with your presence, to loosen the chains we have mistaken for holy law. Or perhaps you are meant to find your way back to the place you were torn from. Either is worthy.”

He lifted one hand, palm open, as though weighing invisible scales.
“The blank mark already told us what we were too blind to see: destiny is not rigid. The gods recommend, but they do not dictate. It is not the inevitability of fate that defines us – but choice. Your choice. That, I believe, is the truth the gods seek to test in us.”

For a moment the silence in the hall was reverent, fragile as spun glass. Tia felt something shift inside her chest, a weight loosening, though she could not yet name it.

From behind her, faintly, she heard the shuffle of cloth. A presence that wasn’t Vesh. She turned half an inch, but before she could look properly, Vesh’s head tilted sharply, frill twitching. His eyes narrowed toward the darkened corridor off to the side. Then, as quickly as it came, the sound was gone. Vesh’s gaze lingered a heartbeat longer before he faced forward again, shoulders tense.

The high priest did not notice – or pretended not to. He reached into the folds of his robe, withdrawing a sealed letter pressed with gilded wax, its crest shimmering faintly in the shaft of sunlight. He held it out, both hands steady.
“Take this. My seal. It will open doors for you within the Arcanum that would otherwise remain barred. It will tell them that I, servant of Syrath, bear witness to your truth.”

Tia stared at it, hardly daring to breathe, before taking the letter into her hands. The parchment felt heavier than it looked, as if the weight of centuries pressed within it.
“I… I don’t know how to thank you,” she whispered.

“You already have,” the priest said. A faint smile touched his lips, serene as a sunrise. “By speaking truth when silence would have been easier. That is courage. That is worship. That is devotion, even if not a believer of Syrath.”

When they finally stepped out of the hall, Tia clutched the letter tight against her chest. Vesh walked beside her in silence, tail lashing once behind him. Only when they had descended the steps of the temple and the cool air of the terrace swept around them did he speak.

“Someone listened,” he said simply.

Tia froze mid-step. “What?”

He flicked his snout back toward the temple doors, his voice quiet, wary. “When you spoke of your origin, of your mark. A shadow lingered. A lesser priest. I saw him slip away when the high priest handed you the letter.”

Her blood ran cold.

Vesh’s hand found her shoulder, firm, steady. “Do not despair. The high priest believes you. That is stronger than any whisper. But be ready, Tia. Not all ears will be so kind.”

Tia nodded, clutching the sealed letter harder, as though it might anchor her against the storm already stirring in unseen corners of Ssarradon.

The tavern was just within reach when the street erupted.

Boots hammered stone, orders barked in harsh tones, and suddenly a line of armored guards surged into the square. Spears leveled, shields locked. The tavern door burst outward – two more guards flooding inside before anyone could react. Shouts rang out within.

Tia stumbled back, clutching the sealed letter against her chest. “No – ”

Vesh’s frill snapped wide, his voice a low growl. “They move too fast. Someone tipped them off.”

The guards’ commander pointed straight at her.
“Celestia! By decree of the crown and temple, you are under arrest for treason and sedition! Lay down your arms!”

Treason. Sedition. They hadn’t even spoken outside the temple – how could the city already know?

Then the tavern doors slammed again. Balthan burst through first, one hand dripping blood, the other already dragging Rika in his wake. Behind them, a guard reeled back clutching a scorched arm.
“Go!” Balthan snarled. His grin was feral, wild. “Don’t waste time explaining – just run!”

Vesh spun, sweeping Tia toward the opposite street with surprising strength. His tail lashed against the cobblestones as he barked over his shoulder: “We hold them here! Take Corin and fly! The high priest’s gift will open a way!”

Tia’s throat locked, but Corin was already tugging at her sleeve, pulling her into motion. She caught one last flash of Vesh – his claws tearing a spear aside, Rika’s daggers flashing in the sun, Balthan’s growls roaring higher – and then the crowd swallowed them.

The terraces blurred beneath her feet as they fled upward. People parted before them, but their eyes lingered, wide and uneasy. Whispers chased her like hounds: Celestia, heretic, sedition, treason.
She could almost feel the weight of their stares pinning her to the stones.

“Tia!” Corin’s breath came ragged beside her. “Where are we even going?”

Her hand closed harder on the sealed letter, as though it burned. She thought of Mystikos, his quiet alcove of riddles and relics – but no. To drag him into this would be to sign his death warrant.

“The Arcanum,” she gasped. “It’s the only chance.”

They cut into a plaza, sunlight flashing off bronze domes above. And there it was – the impossible tower, rising higher than the terraces themselves, its marble pale as bone. Spells bent the air around it, twisting the eye, distorting the space so that no road ever seemed to lead to its door.

Tia forced her legs faster.

Guards were spilling from the streets behind them now, their armor clattering like drums. She heard shouts, the scrape of steel.

“Stop them!”

The tower loomed above them, its pale marble walls shimmering with enchantments. Tia’s lungs burned as she skidded to a halt at the base of the plaza, Corin stumbling against her shoulder.

The guards poured into the square behind them – then blinked, stuttered, warped sideways into narrow alleys and courtyards. One moment a spearpoint gleamed three paces away, the next it flashed uselessly across the plaza where no road should exist. Voices rang out – confused, angry, fractured into echoes. The Arcanum’s spatial wards bent the pursuit like reeds in a stream.

Corin panted, eyes wide. “They can’t follow us?”

“Not really,” Tia wheezed, half in disbelief. She pressed the letter tight against her ribs. “But let’s not… test how clever they are.”

They mounted the final steps together. The doors of the Arcanum towered before them, carved with spiraling sigils that crawled faintly with golden light along the grand verdant dragon masoned out of greenstone.

Tia raised her fist and knocked.

A silence. Then –

A voice unfurled inside their skulls, sonorous and heavy as ancient stone:
“Speak the answer and you may enter. Riddle me this: What breathes without lungs, sleeps without–”

Tia snapped. Sweat streaked her face, her braid half undone, her nerves rubbed raw by flight and fear.
“Oh, fuck off with the riddle!” she barked at the door, voice cracking with fury. She whipped the sealed letter up with a shaking hand. “I’ve got a gilded letter from the High Priest of Syrath himself, so let us the fuck inside before I ram this thing down your enchanted throat!”

A pause. A very undignified pause.

Somewhere just beyond the threshold, they both heard it: the distinct, irritated tsk of an old man clicking his tongue.

The massive doors creaked, groaned, then – very slowly, almost sulkily – swung open by themselves.

Corin blinked. “…Did you just…”

Tia shoved him forward by the sleeve. “If it works, it works. Move your ass,” she said with more frustration than intended.

Inside, the air was cool, humming faintly with magic. The noise of the guards vanished the moment the doors sealed behind them.

The doors thudded shut behind them with a finality that made Tia flinch. The chamber they’d entered was cavernous, lined with pillars that shimmered faintly as though spun from liquid glass. Floating globes of pale fire drifted between them, shedding light with no smoke or heat.

And in the center of it all stood a man.

Robes of deep violet pooled around him, trimmed with a thread that caught the firelight like steel. His beard was long but perfectly combed, a stark white against his walnut skin, and his staff clicked once against the polished floor as he turned toward them. His eyes narrowed.

“So,” he said, voice rasping but sharp. “Another one who thinks riddles are beneath them.”

Tia blinked, still half-panting from the run. “…What?”

He sniffed. “The riddle. You didn’t even let me finish. Do you know how long I spent tuning the cadence of that?”

“Uh–”

But his gaze had already dropped to the seal she still clutched in her hands. The man squinted at it, leaned closer, and made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a groan.

“Oh, for Syrath’s sake. Another one.” He straightened, rubbing his temple with two long fingers. “That priest in Ssarradon has been handing these out like festival sweets. Second one this year. At this rate, every starry-eyed stranger in the district will be knocking on our door.”

Corin, meanwhile, had stopped listening. His gaze darted from pillar to pillar, to the drifting orbs, to the glyphs etched into the high vault of the chamber. “By the gods…” he whispered. “All this – this is Arcanum craft. I can feel the runes humming through the stone – look, Tia, that one’s a stabilizing sequence! It’s – you could never inscribe something like that outside of here – ”

“Boy,” the old mage muttered, “if you gawk too hard, your neck will snap off. Come along before you drool on the floor.”

He turned, his staff tapping out a measured rhythm as he led them toward the far stair.

The climb spiraled upward. Runes crawled along the walls, vast diagrams inked into the stone that shifted and glowed when glanced at directly. Corin’s mouth moved soundlessly, caught between trying to memorize and simply marveling. Tia, however, fixed her eyes on the old man’s back.

“I came here,” she began, steadying her voice, “because I need a spell. One that can carry me a great distance. Across space. Further than any place you’ve likely mapped. To a world only I know.”

The mage didn’t slow his step. He made a sound like a man being told the market had run out of his favorite tea.

“Oh, delightful,” he grumbled. “Another wish-seeker. They always come with their letters and their grand, impossible requests. Bring me my beloved back from death. Mend the river’s course. Undo the march of time. And now – ‘send me home to my faraway star.’” He shook his head. “Always outsiders, always demanding. Never content to read a book and leave us in peace.”

Tia’s jaw tightened. She clutched the letter tighter, forcing herself not to snap back at him.

Corin, however, looked halfway between offended and entranced. “But – surely if anyone could weave a spell to bridge worlds, it would be the Arcanum!”

The old man gave him a flat glance over his shoulder. “Flattery may earn you points in taverns, boy. Not here.”

The stairwell opened into a chamber unlike anything Tia had ever seen. A wide dome, its ceiling etched with constellations of glowing runes. Bookshelves curved along the walls in tiers that reached so high they vanished into the dim upper vault. Between them, lecterns floated in midair, parchments suspended as though the air itself held them open for reading.

At the center of it all stood five figures.

Each was robed differently – scarlet, indigo, bone-white, a green so dark it seemed to drink the light. They had been mid-discussion, voices weaving in impatient cadences, until the old man ushered Tia and Corin into the circle.

“High Priest’s letter,” he muttered, dropping the sealed parchment into the air as though it might soil his hand. It drifted forward, caught by invisible force, and unrolled itself. The wax shimmered. A slow ripple of silence spread across the chamber as each archwizard read the lines.

“Another?” the woman in white said at last, her tone cool. “This year alone.”

“She looks scarcely older than an apprentice,” the green-robed one scoffed. His beard bristled as though his very chin sneered. “And he would send her here?”

“Don’t underestimate her,” said the scarlet mage, his eyes flicking to Tia with sharp interest. “Her aura’s strange. Unmoored.”

The old mage clacked his staff against the stone. “Strange or not, she wants the usual. A spell. A shortcut. They all come with their pretty words and sad stories.” His gaze swept her up and down. “This one thinks we’ll scour the library for years just to please her whim.”

Tia swallowed, her hands clammy against the folded fabric of her skirt. But when she lifted her chin, her voice stayed steady. “It’s not a whim. I want to go back to the world I came from. Another planet. Another reality. I know how impossible that sounds.”

The indigo-robed woman tilted her head, eyes sharp as glass. “Another… world.” She tapped her lips with one painted nail. “Fascinating. Impossible, of course. But fascinating.”

“We don’t have the time to humor fantasies,” the green-robed one snapped. “The archives are vast. Even if such a spell exists, do you imagine we’ll dig through centuries of dust for you?”

Corin bristled at that. “But if anyone can – ”

“Hush,” the old mage cut him off, not even sparing him a glance.

The words burned in Tia’s chest. Her fingers itched. Slowly, deliberately, she pulled back her sleeve. The chamber’s light struck the sigil etched on her skin – faint but shifting, as though alive, and still carrying the ghost of its once-blank form.

The effect was immediate. The scarlet mage leaned forward. The indigo one’s lips parted faintly. Even the green-robed man’s scowl faltered.

“This…” whispered the woman in white. “The mark of L’ile. Blank before, now sealed. You’re… the one from the reports.”

Tia exhaled. “That’s right. And I’ve been studying magic already. Teleportation, spatial bends. Blink-spells, tested on objects. I know it’s crude compared to what you can do, but…” She let a crooked grin slip, and raised her voice. “Oh, I get it now. I get it. You don’t really have the power, do you? Nor the knowledge. Not for something like this. And here I thought I’d reached the pinnacle of magical research, the great hall of archwizards, the unmatched minds of this age.”

Her grin sharpened. “But no. You can’t do it. So maybe I’ll just go back to your neighbor, Mystikos, and find the way myself. We got pretty close, y’know. That day before.”

The chamber went dead still.

Then the green-robed mage made a sound like a kettle exploding. “INSOLENT–” His staff slammed against the floor, sparks leaping from the glyphs.

The old man sputtered. “Mystikos? That washed-up charlatan? He is closer to solving world-traversal than we?”

The scarlet mage actually laughed, low and rich. “Oh, she’s clever.” His eyes glittered. “Testing us. Goading us. But you won’t fool us so easily, girl.”

“She doesn’t need to fool us,” the indigo woman murmured, her gaze never leaving Tia’s mark. “That sigil is real. And if she truly experiments with space on her own, then she is… valuable.”

“Or dangerous,” the man in green snapped. “She seeks to bend us to her will.”

Tia held his glare, though her stomach twisted. “I seek a way home. Nothing more.”

For a heartbeat, no one moved. Only the humming of runes filled the dome.

The silence broke with the sharp thock of the old man’s staff against the stone. His face pinched like he’d bitten into sour fruit.
“She mocks us. Waves a mark about as if it were a license to demand the impossible. This is no scholar, no supplicant – she is a brat with a dangerous toy.”

“You sound rattled,” the scarlet mage said, amused. “If your command of the archives were truly unshakable, would a little provocation prick you so deep?”

The green-robed wizard’s face went redder than his colleague’s robes. “I am not rattled–”

“Enough.”
The woman in white’s voice cut through them, cool as marble. Her eyes rested on Tia – not unkind, not kind either, but weighing, measuring, like a jeweler with a rare stone.
“The mark is no parlor trick. Its bearer has, by every law we know, been chosen by the god of destinies himself. Whether that means she is deluded, or guided, or both at once, remains to be seen. But we cannot dismiss it.”

The indigo mage’s smile tilted, sly and thoughtful. “We could, of course, turn her over to the Crown and wash our hands of the matter. But then…” Her eyes gleamed. “We might never know how far she could go. Or what truths she might tear loose.”

Tia’s throat worked. She wanted to speak, but sensed if she interrupted now, the fragile threads might snap.

Corin, however, couldn’t hold it in. “She’s not lying. She came to us from nowhere – from another place. If there’s anyone worth testing–”

“Boy,” the old mage said with such weariness it was almost cruel, “if you think your wide eyes and eager tongue grant her credibility, you are more foolish than she is.”

But the scarlet mage had already turned back to the others. “A test, then. Not a quest through dust and tome, not months of fruitless scrying. A single crafted spell. A prototype. Let us see what the ‘girl with the blank mark’ does with it.”

The green-robed one bristled. “A waste of ink and parchment.”

“A scroll is hardly a kingdom’s treasury,” the indigo woman countered softly. “And if it shuts her mouth for good, is that not worth the trouble?”

The scarlet mage smirked. “Or opens it wider than ever.”

They all glanced toward the woman in white. She stood very still, gaze on Tia. Finally, she inclined her head once. “One scroll. No promises, no guarantees. We extend this courtesy only because the mark demands it.”

The old mage muttered something under his breath about idiocy and wasted time, but even he didn’t press further.

A shimmer stirred at the center of the dome. Glyphs twisted together in the air, threads of ink weaving without quill or hand. They coiled into parchment, sealed themselves with a sigil older than the guilds, and drifted down like a falling leaf. It hovered before Tia, waiting.

“Take it,” the scarlet mage said, his smile sharp as a blade. “A spell to bridge worlds. Light in its cost, vast in its reach. If you are what you claim, it may answer you.”

Tia stared at the scroll. Her heart hammered so loud she was certain Corin could hear it. Slowly, she reached out, the seal warm against her palm.

“Know this,” the green-robed one said, voice like a curse. “We do not scour the archives for you. We do not kneel. If you fail – if you misuse it – it will be your ruin, not ours.”

“I understand,” Tia said. Her voice shook, but only once. “Thank you.”

The old man snorted. “You’ll not thank us when you see the price of your games.”

The chamber hummed again, the spell of audience unraveling. Shelves blurred, voices dimmed. Tia blinked, and she and Corin were being shepherded back toward the stairwell by the old mage, who grumbled every step as if regretting being alive at all.

Corin leaned close, whispering with eyes still wide. “Do you realize what this means? Th–they gave you a piece of their magic. A real piece. No one outside the Arcanum ever–”