Chapter 24: The Road South.

The road south was the first proper road I had ever walked. It was just a human road, wide enough for two carts abreast. I had only ever walked warpaths already trampled underneath my horde. Mile markers stood at intervals. I could read the numbers and the language well enough -that I had already confirmed in Hamel. Some things hadn’t changed, which was odd. They should have.

The forest thinned behind us within the first two hours and in its place came open land and rolling hills of green that stretched as far as the eye could see. It was a sight I found myself staring out at, more than once. Even the air tasted different, and not in a bad way.

In the Demon Realm, the horizon had always been something you fought toward -toward a line of fire or perhaps a distant fortress to be conquered. It was odd to travel at all with no such thoughts in mind. Farmland appeared as the morning wore on. That was odd too, to see it all not already set ablaze.

The Inker walked at the front of our column and his soldiers formed a loose arrangement around us. There were four men between us and the Inker at all times.

The thin satchel hung from my shoulder, the egg nestled inside against spare clothes. I could feel its warmth through the cloth. It had been faintly pulsing for a while now. The rhythm had changed over the morning -it was slower now. It matched my heartbeat, or perhaps mine had begun to match it instead.

When the road grew rough with loose stone at one point, I shifted the satchel to my other shoulder. When the wind picked up, I turned so that my body shielded the bag. I did all of this without thinking, only realizing what I had done after the fact. When I noticed, I glared at the satchel. The egg never did answer for its transgressions. Against my skin, beneath the dress, Sara’s clay bead rested on its cord. I had not touched it since the road began. I could feel it there with every step.

We stopped at midday beside a stream that cut through the base of a low hill.

The soldiers filled their waterskins. The Inker sat on a flat stone and produced dried meat from his pack. I sat slightly apart from them with Ash, the satchel in my lap. I opened it to check on the egg -to inspect it for damage. That was the reason. Each time, there was no damage. The shell was warm to the touch, warmer than it had been that morning. The gold caught the midday light and held it. The black drank it in.

That was when the Inker looked at my arms. The act of reaching into the satchel had made my sleeve ride up just enough. His chewing stopped. The dried meat hung from his fingers, forgotten. He rose and crossed the distance between us in four strides. “Show me your marks. Lys…was it?” There was no sneer. The man looked genuinely bewildered. His eyes moved over the black Line on my right forearm, tracing its path from toward my now exposed elbow. He leaned close, squinting, and I could see the slight tremor in his hands.

I reluctantly pulled both sleeves up. His breath left him in a thin wheeze, even as his eyes bulged. He did not touch me. He would not have lived long enough to regret it if he had.

“Ash, that was your name,” he said, turning towards her. Ash hesitated for only a moment, before she extended her arms. The Inker examined hers with the same intensity. She only had the one Line, but it didn’t seem to matter. The Inker’s lips parted and slowly closed. His brows drew together. “Lines,” he finally said. “Both of you already have Lines….” He breathed out the words.

It seemed the man had a penchant for stating the obvious. Small men always did. “Yes,” I said. “Is this remarkable to you?”

The Inker’s jaw clenched. “I have students who trained for one full year before their Spark became a Line. A year of practice, Essence, instruction and access to the finest resonance chambers in Koralis.” He straightened, brushing dirt from his robes. “You have had seven days.”

He looked between us, and his bewilderment was genuine. “The mana it would take to advance a Spark this quickly is already absurd,” he said, half to himself. “But you have Sovereigns…Sovereign marks take at least three times the power of any other order to advance even a single stage. The amount you would need to have pushed through in seven days is…” His whisper trailed off and he shook his head. “It shouldn’t be possible with mana alone, not in seven days, not even for a prodigy. It does not matter how you do it, it simply isn’t possible. Then…there is the insight. Where would you two have found that….?”

He stared at my arms as if they had personally offended him. “Do you have Essence?” he asked sharply.

I held his gaze. “I do not know what that is.”

The Inker blinked. Whatever answer he had expected, that wasn’t it. “An Essence Core. Do you have one? Either of you? Have you been trained? Where?”

I glanced at Ash. She shook her head, just slightly. The term meant nothing to her either. Essence…he had mentioned that once before, at the Inking. And now this Essence Core. I did not have the faintest idea what either term meant, but they certainly seemed important.

“We do not know what that is,” I said again. I did not enjoy repeating myself, but the man’s face was doing something I had never tired of. The slow unravelling of certainty.

The Inker went quiet. “Allow me….” He raised a hand towards my side. I stared at his hand. Another place, I would have refused. I extended my arm towards him. He took it.

I felt the pulse of mana inside me. No…no this was something different. Heavier? “You really don’t have an Essence Core….” His mouth opened and slowly closed as he let my arm go. He stood there for a long moment, his eyes moving between us.

“What is Essence?” Ash asked before I could.

The Inker composed himself. Whatever had cracked in his composure was smoothed over now, though not well. “That is a matter for the Academy,” he said. “You will learn when we arrive.”

“That isn’t an answer,” Ash pressed.

“It is the answer you will receive on this road.” He turned and walked back to his stone. The dried meat had fallen in the dirt. He did not pick it up. Ash looked at me. I looked at her. There was a power beyond mana, then. One that the Inker guarded with the same jealousy that priests always guarded their rites. I filed the word away. Essence and Essence Core. How interesting.

The part of me that burned for all magical knowledge lit up. I would get the answer out of this man during this trip, whether he wished to give it to me or not. The Inker did not approach us again for some time. He still came back within the hour. I had known he would.

We were walking again by then, the hills rolling past us in that unbroken green. A breeze had picked up from the west, carrying the scent of earth and something faintly sweet that I could not identify.

The Inker fell into step beside me, which meant two of his soldiers had to adjust their positions. One of them looked deeply displeased about it. The Inker was not looking at my marks this time. He was looking at the satchel. “I noticed something in your pack,” he said. His tone was different from the earlier conversation. It was almost conversational. “A Beast Egg, if I am not mistaken. The coloring is unusual. A brilliant gold with strange black veining. I know of no catalogued species that produces an egg of that description.”

I did not stiffen. That was beneath me. “Perhaps your catalogue is incomplete.”

He ignored this. “Many people do keep beast companions, they are bonded creatures, tied to a wielder’s mark. They are rather rare -a sign of affinity between bearer and beast. One would not find such a thing anywhere near Hamel.” He glanced at me sideways. “How did you come by it?”

I considered the merits of lying. “I killed a beast and then I found this.”

The Inker waited for more. I offered nothing, and so he pressed. “What kind of beast?”

I gave him the barest description. “A beast that attacked the village. I slew it. The villagers did mention that to you, did they not? This is its…child.”

It did not seem like he fully believed me. Nonetheless, he said nothing further. The Inker looked at the satchel differently after that. I saw his hand twitch at his side, a barely suppressed urge to examine the egg more closely. He mastered it, and that was good, for he might have lost the hand.

Over the next hour, I asked many questions, and none of them had been answered. The Inker deflected each one. None of the soldiers so much as bothered to even acknowledge I had asked them anything at all. For an escort, they were a rather surly bunch.

Ash was more patient in her approach when she finally made it. She fell into step near the Inker as the afternoon wore on. The road had widened further. I could see wheel tracks crossing in both directions, and twice we passed other travellers moving north. They gave us a wide berth.

“This…Academy, you called it,” Ash began. “What happens there, exactly? I am afraid we know little of this consecration you have recruited us to.”

The Inker clasped his hands behind his back. This was one of the rare questions he actually answered. “Your marks will be cultivated and your potential will be nurtured. Your talents will eventually be directed toward the good of all, in service to the Archon and the Covenant. Well, I say all of these things but it is you who will do all of them. All we will do is provide an environment suitable for the task.”

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The man said this like it explained everything. It explained nothing, and left me with more questions than when he had started speaking. “What is this Covenant?” She asked.

“All those that follow the wisdom of the Divine.” The man said.

“Who…is this Divine?”

“God,” the man said.

I stared at him. God? Now that was a lofty title. I had certainly never heard of a God by that name before, and I knew all of them, as they well knew me. Besides, all Gods were Gods of something. None of them would be arrogant enough to take the entire role. I would have asked, if I’d thought I’d get any answers.

“You mentioned that our marks would be…cultivated. Cultivated how?” Ash asked.

“Through established methods, honed over centuries of practice.”

“And what would they be directed toward, specifically?”

“The betterment of the realm.”

“That’s not an answer.” Ash pressed.

“As I have said before, it is the answer I will give you on this road.” The Inker’s stride did not change. “The methods are sacred. They are discussed within Academy grounds, under the guidance of those authorized to teach them.”

There was real conviction in his voice. The fool truly did believe what he said. I had known priests who felt this way about their rites. I had killed most of them. Many demons had had this conviction when they spoke of me, and them I had never learned what to do with. Orzathiel had been one. Had been the loudest of them all.