Chapter 244: Leaking [BONUS]

Encrid woke because the room smelled like a forge.

For a moment he did not know where he was. The smell was so familiar that his body reacted before his mind did. Hot iron. Scorched wood. The dry, bitter air of Wall’s workshop on the night the Cavel wagons came in, when every smith on the Wall had been beating bolt heads until dawn.

Then he remembered the garden, the plum tree, the narrow bed.

He opened his eyes.

The lamp had gone out hours ago. The room should have been dark. Instead, there was a faint light near the floor, in the corner where his coat was folded.

It was coming from the Pillow.

Encrid sat up too quickly. His ribs complained, and the healing wound along his right side pulled tight under the bandage. He ignored both and looked.

The small grey cushion lay on top of his coat where it had been for weeks. It was more swollen than before. Its sides were stretched so tight that the weave of the cloth had opened, and he could see a pale glow through the gaps.

Along one seam, near the corner, the stitching had come loose.

A thread of light was coming out of it.

It was very thin, no thicker than a hair. It was white, so white that it hurt to look at, and it did not flicker like a flame. It was perfectly still. It came out of the seam and bent down to the floor, and where it touched the floorboards, the wood was burning.

Not with fire. There were no flames. The wood simply turned black and sank, as if it were being pressed by an iron heated for days.

The black line was already as long as his finger.

Encrid swung his legs off the bed.

He did not have his sword. He could not use his Star. He was not sure his legs would carry him across the room without folding. The corner was only six steps away, and it felt much further.

He took the first step with one hand on the wall.

On the second step, he remembered the cup of water.

’Slot two.’

He thought of it, and it was in his hand. The clay cup was cool against his palm. The water inside did not even ripple. It was exactly as it had been when he had stored it more than three weeks ago, on the first night he opened the Inventory.

He did not have time to be pleased that his test had worked.

He reached the corner, crouched badly, and poured the water over the burning line.

It hissed. A small cloud of steam rose and stung his eyes. The black line stopped growing, and the smell of burning wood grew stronger for a moment and then began to fade.

The thread of light was still there.

It had not cared about the water at all. It hung from the seam to the floor, still and white, and the wet wood under it had already begun to steam again.

Encrid did the only other thing he could think of.

He picked up the edge of the coat and turned the Pillow over, so that the open seam faced upward.

The thread of light bent at once. It curled upward from the seam like smoke on a still day, rose about the height of a hand, and then faded into nothing.

The floor stopped burning.

Encrid sat back against the wall. He was breathing hard, and his side was throbbing. Sweat ran down his neck even though the room was cold.

A window opened in front of him.

[ Pillow of the Sleeping God ]

[ Deferred consequence: Dragon’s Breath ]

[ Warning: Containment failing. ]

[ Containment: 91% ]

[ The debt remains until it is taken. ]

He read the window twice.

Ninety-one percent.

He did not know how full the Pillow had been when he had used it at the end of the Span. The window at the time had only said that the consequence exceeded its capacity. He had been too busy dying to ask for numbers.

But now there were numbers.

He stayed in the corner until the window closed. Then he took his coat off the floor, folded it again so that the Pillow sat upright on top, and pushed the whole bundle away from the wooden wall with his foot until it rested on the stone hearth.

Then he crawled back to bed. It took a long time.

He did not sleep again that night.

? ? ?

In the morning, the Divine Sage came in with his foul green drink and stopped in the doorway.

He looked at the floor.

There was a black line burned into the boards near the corner, as long as a hand and as straight as if it had been drawn with a rule. The wood around it was stained with water.

The old man walked over and crouched beside it. He touched the black line with one green-stained fingertip, then lifted the finger to his nose and smelled it.

"What did you do?" he asked.

"The lamp tipped over," Encrid said.

The Sage looked at the lamp on the table. It stood exactly where it always stood. Its glass was clean, and its oil was low, as if it had burned out in the ordinary way.

Then he looked at the line on the floor again.

"Lamps don’t burn like that," he said.

"This one did."

The Sage was quiet for a moment. Encrid thought he would argue. Instead he stood up, brushed his knees, and gave Encrid the cup.

"Drink this," he said. "All of it. And whatever tipped over, don’t let it tip over near my herbs. I’ve only got one bundle of mountain sorrel left, and I’m not walking two hundred miles to find more."

He left without asking anything else.

Encrid drank the green drink. It tasted worse than usual.

He spent the rest of the day by the window, watching the stone hearth where his coat and the Pillow now sat. Every hour, he opened the Pillow’s window.

Ninety-one percent.

Ninety-one percent.

Ninety percent.

By the time the sun touched the top of the garden wall, it had fallen to eighty-nine.

The dragon had not spoken to him all day. He had felt its presence in the same place as always, a quiet weight on top of the wall. But it had been silent, even when Sera came and went, even when he deliberately did not look in its direction.

When the garden was dark and the house had gone quiet, the voice came at last.

It was softer than usual. There was no contempt in it at all, and that frightened Encrid more than anything he had seen the night before.

{ It is leaking. }

? ? ?

Bonus Chapter for 300 Golden Tickets~