Chapter 16: Easy Peasy

Digging the relics out proved more challenging than expected. Mr. Cald had taken half the relics. One would have satisfied Milo for now.

But whenever he tried grabbing the relics from underneath the glass cases...

"AAAIIIEEE!!"

A current jolted his whole body.

The yellow sheet flashed beside him before snapping closed again.

"Fuck," he muttered, eyes locked onto the door for a good five seconds.

Five more, for the corridor. If that sound had a witness, the academy’s ghost had just learned to howl.

A barrier protected the relics.

Bending over, he read the placard of the relic that had just electrocuted him.

Used in the evacuation of Harrow Ferry to pull burning thatch. Twelve households owe it their lives.

It was a two-handed iron fire-hook, its pole scorched. Surely better than a Crudepiece; it might’ve even been a Blessedpiece. But what good could a room full of relics do if he couldn’t touch them?

Wards, they were called. Barriers bound to relics themselves, typically used on Hearths and Fatherlands, but also on pieces put on display.

Ethical Wards work by preventing the person, NOT harming them, from picking up the relic, Milo recalled.

In other words, a test of endurance. No instructor got to set a Ward that truly damaged a student. The academy needed its research subjects intact.

He extended his hand, the sweat cooling in the creases of his knuckles, and stopped it an inch from the hook.

"Yellow sheet, how am I even supposed to absorb it?"

...

Fine. He’d endured that beating well, so what was a meaningless dose of pain in the grander scheme of things?

Teeth gritted, arms tense, he reached out to the relic.

"U-Uh." It came out of him regardless. "AAAHH!!!"

Milo staggered back, bumping into a podium. It swung and tipped.

"NO!"

He quickly caught it, almost fell down with it too, before hauling it upright. The podiums would have made a domino of clamor and shattered glass.

He wiped the sweat from his temples and leaned in to see what he had nearly broken his neck over.

It was a pair of sandals with an extra hole punched in one strap.

Worn by Brother Ansel through the fever wards of the Second Visitation. Forty nights among the dying. He woke no one.

Forty nights. Did he actually do anything?

Milo turned back to the hook that could be used for actual combat. If a relic with no matching section fed the Innate Column instead...

"The Innate Column?"

[ The Innate Column ]

[ Maturity: Minute ]

[ Progress toward Hour: 0.00% ]

[ Developments: 1 / 9 ]

[ The traitless foundation of Authorship. Absorption advances its Maturity. Each Maturity grants one unique Development. ]

[ Maturation also deepens the User’s compatibility with Doom matter. ] 𓂃🖋

"What’s Hour’s development?"

[ Hour Development ]

[ Catalogue ]

[ Permits the User to view a standing list of all doom-matter on his person. ] 𓂃🖋

Yeah. No powers before he claimed a Calamity. The Column was a drawer of tools with nothing yet to use them on.

"What’s Day’s development?"

...

"Could you tell me before I eat it? Just this once?"

Milo gripped his hair with both hands and looked at the fire-hook.

It’s just pain. Keep your teeth apart.

"It’s motherfucking metal!" he cried out, way louder than he should’ve. "Am I really supposed to eat that?"

No response.

His hand shot out and grabbed onto the hook, tight.

"Khhh..." was the quietest sound he could manage as his muscles locked.

His teeth felt ready to fall out of his tightening jaw, his arms burned, his knees crackled as though crumbling to dust, but he held on, held on until the yellow sheet displayed the relic’s statistics.

A fragment of his lip caught on a tooth. Blood leaked once more from his mouth, sliding to the ground.

[ Grade: Common ]

[ Name: An Iron Turnhook ]

[ Type: Arms ]

[ Longevity: Day ]

[ Mercies: None ]

[ Litany: Unavailable ]

[ Description: Iron, mostly. Heavier than its legend. ] 𓂃🖋

"F-Finally..." He let go. Tears dripped off his chin.

Longevity, Day. Good. Considering how petty the floating piece of paper was, it might even fulfill his development.

Grade, common... who cared?

Milo did, a lot. He debated it with himself for about ten minutes.

His mouth opened about as wide as a soup bowl. The hook was two-handed and longer than his arm.

Every argument he built ended with him not touching it.

The wrist was worth a try: skin on relic, no mouth involved. Maybe there was a way to absorb it without eating it. Despite the paralyzing nature of the Ward and the excruciating pain that came with each grab, Milo tried tapping the relic onto his wrist, and when that failed, on all sorts of body parts.

No.

That led to nothing more than increasing amounts of trauma.

In pursuit of the easiest-to-consume object, he walked around the room twice on his sore ankle, reading the same placards in the same order and liking them no better.

He ended up in front of an amber knucklebone, drilled for a cord. It was close in size to his first meal, which was the bullet.

Carried through nine Returns by the Picker Odom Weck. Donated upon retirement.

Milo pinched the amber and bore the current burning in his veins, now minimizing the sound to mere deep breaths.

[ Grade: Common ]

[ Name: Weck’s Knucklebone ]

[ Type: Token ]

[ Longevity: Hour ]

[ Mercies: None ]

[ Litany: Unavailable ]

[ Description: A token carried far past its usefulness. Sentiment is not a Mercy. ] 𓂃🖋

He withdrew his fingers.

Okay. Hour Longevity was okay, since it’d test how maturity was counted.

Milo took the placard out and slid it under the knucklebone. He felt quite clever about it, until...

"Khhhh!!!!"

That counted as touch too. Right.

He discovered, however, that what did not count as touch was holding onto the podium.

But maybe he didn’t need to work around that so much? After all, he could grab it and last the few seconds the data took to show. A swift arc of the arm ending at his mouth, and the rest was up to his throat.

Easy peasy. Easy peasy...

═══════════════════

⋆˚࿔ Coming right up: "Hour" ... ⤵︎ [!]