Chapter 9: The First Inking.

“Are you really going to do this?”

Ash stood by the window, arms folded -morning light framed her against the shutters. She had already dressed in the clothes Martha had left for her. The pink looked garish to me, though perhaps not as much as it once might have. I did not look up from the Darkness Binding. I had been running my fingers over its surface since before dawn, checking for damage that wasn’t there.

“Yes.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Ash turned from the window. Her eyes were careful in a way that I had come to recognize. It was the way she looked before she said something she knew would provoke me. “This is submitting to a power we don’t understand. You know that. We know too little of these marks, or what they might do to those who bear them…If I can see it, then surely you can too.” She said, confirming my suspicion.

“And?”

The Hero frowned. “Why are you not more concerned? What if these are new chains, and now you’re walking into a set of them?”

I set the armor aside and met her gaze. Odd that she now reject power, when she had never once rejected being a Hero. Had never once rejected all of the Gods whose blessings she had taken. Perhaps I was not the only one who felt something uncomfortable and foreign each night.

“You feel it, don’t you?” I said. Ash went still, and so I continued, “Your mana is thinning, as is your aura. I can feel it. Each day, there is less of both -your powers are draining.” I paused. “If we fought that Divine Beast from the forest now, we would die.” Ash said nothing at that. “How long, Hero? A month? Two? Before you cannot even lift that sword of yours?”

Her jaw tightened and her hand drifted, just for an instant, toward the blade leaning against the wall. “That’s not-“

“It is.” I stood. “I did not claw my way across a thousand years to be outmatched by children who can conjure fire with a snap of their fingers. If this world runs on Ink instead of Classes, then I will have ink.” The words could not carry the weight of all the agonizing thought that had gone behind them. I did not like it any more than Ash did. I liked feeling myself diminish even less.

And this ‘Ink’ might answer some of the questions that gnawed at me. Why was my body different? Where had the System gone? Where were the Gods? My probing questions had revealed that these people knew none of the names I carefully mentioned -names even people in backwaters should recognize. The silence that followed my statement was not quite agreement.

“Then we both go,” Ash said quietly. I did not acknowledge the ‘both.’ But I did not object.

Martha caught us at the door. “A word, dears.” She wiped her hands on her apron. She’d just gotten done cooking. “The Inker’s name is Master Aldric. He came through twelve winters ago with a fever that nearly killed him. We nursed him for three weeks. He’s not forgotten it. Just…take care.” She looked between us. “He’s a proud man. Don’t give him reason to make this difficult.”

Ash only nodded at the warning.

The Inker arrived in the late afternoon and did not come alone. The village had been preparing since midday. Lanterns strung along the dirt path in uneven rows. Dried flowers hung from doorways that had none before. The children ran in circles.

The adults were quiet. Even Tom, who could make small talk with a stone wall, was quiet. There was a reverence to it, I think, and something akin to fear too. I had often seen both directed at me, though the latter far more often.

The Inker was a lean and sharp man, dressed in dark robes threaded with silver. The ten men with him all wore silver armor. Some carried lances, others held spears or bows. A few held swords. One even had a massive hammer. All of them had visible marks in swirling branching patterns displayed on bare arms, nothing like the small dots the villagers had.

The Inker carried with him a black case strapped across his back, and when he walked, the crowd parted without being asked. A holy man, such as existed in this time. Tom and his wife had told me much. They had also insisted we not wear our armor.

He set up at the center of the square. The soldiers stood off to the side, watching. He opened the black case to reveal a rack of small vials, each filled with ink that was not ink, or not just ink. The liquid shifted on its own within the glass. I had never seen its like before.

My gaze moved to the Inker’s forearms. He had two marks of his own, both intricate, and moving in patterns that formed shapes. One was in the vague shape of brown horns, and the other was an imitation of a red plant of some sort. I had never seen someone with two marks before. Never seen ones that made actual shapes.

It was Tom who led us toward the man. He had told us bluntly that our stories didn’t make sense. He had explained the facts of our suspicious situation. Ash had decided to go with something resembling honesty when the time came. The fool.

“Master Inker,” Tom said, dipping his head. Ash dipped hers. I did not dip mine. “These two are staying with us. They came out of the forest a few days back and then helped protect my nephew from a wolf pack on the road.”

The Inker barely glanced up from his vials. “And?”

“They don’t have marks.”

That got him to look. His hands stilled over the case. His eyes moved to Ash first, then to me, and they lingered on my horns. “How old are you?” he asked. The question was directed at both of us, but his gaze stayed on me.

“Old enough,” I said.

“She means we’re both adults,” Ash cut in, stepping slightly in front of me. “We weren’t raised in a village. We didn’t have access to this ceremony growing up. Simple as that.”

The Inker straightened. He was taller than Tom, though not by much. The silver threading in his robes caught the light as he folded his arms. “As simple as that,” he repeated, his voice flat. “Two grown women with no Ink.” His brows furrowed as he eyed us. “And you took them in,” he whispered, these words were directed at Tom.

There was a knife behind that last part. Tom tensed and Ash looked ready to say something. “They earned their place here,” Tom said firmly, more firmly than I would have expected. “They aren’t suspicious folk.”

The Inker all but ignored him as he looked over the merchant’s head. “Where are you from? Which province?” Tom stepped back and wilted in on himself.

“We’ve traveled extensively,” Ash said. “We don’t claim a single-“

“I didn’t ask you.” He nodded at me. “I asked you. You tell me first, then the other one can,”

“You are asking the wrong questions,” I said. “And I do not answer to you.”

Something flickered across his face. Surprise, perhaps. I did not think it was anger. Tom shook like a leaf in the wind.

“Is that so.” He took a step closer and one of his marks was glowing faintly, the one in the shape of horns. “Do you know who I am, girl?”

Once, he would have turned to ash at the first word. I had pulled out the tongues of men far grander, for far less. Ash brushed my side. It wasn’t just us now. There were other people there, staring at us from a distance. Not far enough not to hear us. That girl was among them.

Damn it.

“A man of some authoriity,” I said finally, my jaw clenched.

“Good. It seems even a savage can understand that much.” His posture shifted. The glow on his mark dimmed. “No marks,” he said again. “At your age.” He circled us, slowly, the way a beast might before lunging for the kill. “In what village were you raised that would allow such neglect? Or is it that the Ink was offered, and you refused it?” He let the question hang. The crowd had long gone quiet.

“There are words for those who refuse the Ink,” he continued. “Forsaken or heretic.” At the last word, some of the soldiers took one step forward. Nobody reached for a weapon. Not yet.

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“We submit to it now!” Ash said. She did the last thing I had expected her to do. She bowed her head. The Hero who hadn’t bowed to my might, bowed her head in front of this man. The Inker’s lip curled and his eyes found mine.

“A village that holds heretics…” he said loudly. “May not last.”

My head turned. I stared at that girl again -just at her. The rest might as well not have been there. The Goddess of Love had once demanded I bow before her, when she’d thought I needed her help. I had spat in her face. The Inker I could take, perhaps. The others? Even with the Hero, I did not like my odds. Too much of me had drained since waking up. I had not thought that things would go this way.

I bowed my head like the Hero had done. It felt stiff, as if the slightest bending threatened to break me. My teeth clenched, as did my fists.

“Very well,” the Inker said finally, smoothing the front of his robes. “If the Ink rejects them for their age, the consequence falls on them. And on you.”

“The Ink is sacred,” he said, and there was real conviction behind it. “It is not given to those who have spurned it. I will make an exception, just once. For the kindness Hamel once showed me.”

I wondered if this had all been a mistake.