For one moment, Kaon gaped like an idiot. Then he closed his surprised mouth, and frowned. Vessia! Here, now, somehow – what to say? What was the coolest thing he could say?
“Not just minor telekinesis, then,” he said. “Your Breath, I mean. That is how you appeared here?”
Rather than answer, she said, “Hand me that.”
Kaon gave her the book she had pointed at – Numiel’s Gates. She opened her mouth, and a purple glow condensed as a sphere in her maw. Part of it flew out to strike and engulf the book. The sphere remained, smaller now. Then she turned, eyes landing on the other book on her bed. Now the entire sphere flew, engulfing the second book.
The glow was gone.
Kaon had to look twice before he realized – the book she held was Malthec: Reign and Darkness.
“Teleportation? As a Breath?” Kaon didn’t think to hide his bewilderment. He hadn’t heard of a Breath like that before – and yet, it was not something to be ashamed of. Why hide it?
“I join things. There was no distance between the two. They were adjacent, like two sides of a coin. I flipped the coin.” Vessia held out the book. “You should read.”
“Haore said your Breath was minor telekinesis.” Then he realize he’d said something like that earlier – did he look stupid repeating himself like this?
Vessia Breathed, purple glow engulfing the book she’d given Kaon. “Toss it,” she said, then Breathed the remaining orb.
The book arced in the air before it began to accelerate downwards. Then the motion was arrested as Malthec is replaced by Numiel. Kaon glanced to the other book – to find it flew upward.
“How…” The other book fell with a thump.
Vessia caught and passed him one she’s made fly. “Open it.”
Kaon complied. “I don’t know if you want me to read, or–”
“Only to check that you can read,” Vessia said. Then elaborated, “You flip a letter, and it is not the same, is it? Just as your right paw is not your left paw. I flip without changing left and right by adding a twist to the joining.”
Kaon just stared. Was that supposed to be enough for him to understand?
“Flipping is a kind of spinning, so by changing the twist, I can spin things when I flip them.” Vessia is speaking slowly. “If I join something to itself, I can flip it and change way it moves. Everything is always moving down.”
“Could you show it to me again?” Kaon knelt down to pick up the fallen book. It rose despite him holding onto it with a single claw.
He presented the book, and Vessia sighed and swapped it one more time. This time, his eyes widened. Kaon felt it in his Breath, as he’d snuck it underneath the book to be engulfed in Vessia’s own Breath.
He expected to feel it jumping through space. Instead…
There was a sensation he’d only seen described in tales of other realms, flooded with water and floating platforms called boats. The vertigo of feeling motion and not seeing it, one sense conflicting with another. Kaon felt his Breath move only a tiny, hair-width amount if anything, and yet it was far farther away. Jarring.
Even if Kaon couldn’t quite grasp what Vessia was describing, he could at least see the conclusion. “So you made the mentors think… flipping things and changing their velocities was all your Breath could do.” He saw Vessia nod. “Yeah, I’ve been hiding everything my Breath can do too.” Then he glanced at wall, where in the distance his zephyr creation and its fallout lay. “Though I suppose it won’t be much of a secret anymore.”
“No. What are you talking about? You’ve never Breathed.”
Kaon frowned, ears falling back defensively. He opened his mouth – and Vessia interrupted. (Fortunate; he realized whatever he said might have come out with an embarrassing tone.)
“Your cast-off is not a Breath. It doesn’t use mana, it’s not channeled – did you never notice how it behaved like no other Breath? Did you not feel you were doing something unusual? To think I had been impressed you managed such an advanced technique.”
“What you’re saying is…” The ridges above his eyes raised.
“If I have to spell it out,” she started, “you don’t have a special Breath. You’re doing nothing unprecedented. You simply found a way to evert a fragment of your soul. Likely it is the very pneumaorgan that typically channels mana.”
Kaon closed his mouth and then lowered his eye ridges before he looked silly. He said, “In your letter, you said there were two sides, and I’d have to choose.”
“This project, this school, Devain’s machine… I don’t fit. You and I are alike, in that way. I have no place in what Devain is building, and I want to escape. He doesn’t want me to. Those are the two sides.” Vessia glances to the book she held. “As for your choice… you and I both have our potential limited here. We’re parts misaligned for this machine – yet you strive to fit anyway. I don’t trust you for that reason. But… you may be helpful for what I am planning.”
“Wh-what do you need me to do?”
“At town’s realm-gate, I am leaving tonight, whether you’re there or not. Come, even if you’re being followed.”
“The mentors say our realm-gate is untethered. It can’t be used without a skeinwalker to rebind it, and there hasn’t been–”
“I am a skeinwalker.”
Kaon blinked.
“We both have inheritances the mentors have kept hidden from us. That book,” – Vessia flips again – “may be worth reading. If you have other questions, try thinking first. I need to go, before Devain senses me and returns here.”
“Wait – that red dragon, are you going to put them back?”
“Yes.”
“Let me get ready to surprise them.”
“Do not kill them, I have an agreement with him.”
Kaon really deserved a prize for not saying ‘what?’ as many times this conversation as he could have. “Given they attacked me – mind explaining?”
“Did a dragon telling you not to come here make you want to come here less, or more?”
Then, without any warning, Vessia disappeared and the red dragon appeared in her place with purple flash.
Kaon could count on their bewilderment, and he had payed attention in their last combat.
He dove forward, paws reaching out for the bag. He retrieves the sleep gem they’d hit him with.
And he returns the favor.
For a giddy moment, triumph flares across his muzzle as a grin. He won. He’d rectified the loss against this dragon. This lasts but one moment; then it falters, ridges above his eyes furrow. But how much of this ‘win’ was his, and not due to luck and Vessia’s help?
Kaon huffs out a breath, then picks up the crumpled paper the red dragon had seized. The black dragon had won, finally done what he’d been angling for all afternoon. What for it? A conversation with Vessia – nice, if confusing – and this piece of black paper. With black ink upon it, if it’s words are to be believed – yet Kaon could read it just fine.
What to do now?
It would be hours until time for Vessia’s plan. And before then, he needed to figure out a way to get there. The realm-gate was out in the the city’s oldtown, not Devain’s schoolgrounds – a whole skyland away! A few hours to figure a way past the gatekeeper or the net encircling the school, then winging to the realm-gate. How easy.
He unfolded the black paper, but the words, if not seared in his mind, hung heavy and easy to recall. Vessia had given him so little actionable to work with, but eyes flickered to one commandment.
- Write down every plan. Always trust your handwriting, above all else.
Then he looked about the room.
If the violet dragon herself was asking this, there would be no shame in this, right? Kaon dug through Vessia’s chest until he found some kind of paper and some ink to scratch out words with.
What plans did he have?
His Breath – cast-off, rather – danced under his will, still faintly purple.
- have to meet w/ Vessia tonight
- figure out her Breath
Was he forgetting something?
Oh! He sunk a paw into his side-strapped bag, and recovered a warm piece of metal. Imbry’s necklace. He needed to get this back to her. If Vessia was leaving, if both of them were leaving… All of this started with him up against a thief. He shouldn’t become one.
He snaked his neck through the looping chain, until it rested against his breast. It had been sitting in his bag for a while, but the metal wasn’t cool. It felt like it’d sat out before a summer radiance.
Kaon frowned. Really, he wasn’t in any danger of stealing this. He wanted to take it off instead. The uncomfortable heat would keep him from forgetting about it again, at least.
Kaon’s head darted around as the lair’s curtain was sliding down the back of his neck. But there were no enemies crouching in wait. He was free for moments more, even if he knew trouble hung inexorably above him. He walked out of the lair, into the wide cavern.
Kaon.
He felt someone calling his name, and then realized it was a voice when it followed up with, “Do you hear me, my pupil?”
Kaon paused, and looked around. “Who’s there?” But he knew.
“Ah, but who else could I be? It is I, Devain.”
Snuggly Serials 