Chapter 12: Accident

There was absolutely no time to think.

The far terrace was on the other side of the pit. If he went down, Vivienne would see him. If he cut straight across the top, he would be in full moonlight for half the way. The only route that stayed in shadow was the long one, all the way around the rim behind the broken blocks and the old ladders. A minute, maybe more.

Down in the pit, the Warden’s fist came down.

Vivienne wasn’t there when it landed. She slid gracefully sideways like a strip of cloth in the wind, and the fist smashed into the stone where she had been standing, throwing up a cloud of pale dust. Twenty silver crescents flew out of the dust and raked the giant’s chest, cutting deep red lines into it. It didn’t even slow down slightly.

Aren ran.

He kept low behind the blocks and moved faster than he had ever moved in either of his lives, the cores he’d absorbed burning in his legs, stone scraping his palms. Below him, the fight raged on in a storm of silver light and grinding rock, and every few seconds the whole pit shook.

He reached the far terrace from above and behind and stopped on a ledge right over the three men in dark coats.

They hadn’t seen him, because they were watching the fight intently, crossbows resting on the fallen block, bolts loaded. The bolts had black heads. Aren didn’t know much about weapons in this world, but he knew what a black head meant: something strong enough to drop a Rank E monster in one shot. Or to make sure the whole Academy knew House Holt had stepped in at the last moment.

Behind them, Darius stood with his arms folded.

"Wait for it," Darius murmured. "Wait until she’s down. Then all three, at the head."

"Yes, my lord."

Aren looked at the three men.

He had never killed anyone in this life. In his first one, he had killed exactly one man, a partner named Grant, with a car and a wet road and a long, careful lie afterward. He had never felt bad about it, and that had always been the real problem with him.

He thought about those black bolts pointed at Vivienne’s back and found he didn’t feel bad now either.

He dropped onto the first man.

It was fast and ugly and nothing at all like the stories. His knife went into the side of the man’s neck while they were still falling, and they hit the stone together. The man made a wet, surprised noise, and his crossbow clattered away down the terrace.

The second man spun around, white-faced in the moonlight, and saw a shape in a grey cloak with a strip of cloth over its face. His eyes went strange and unfocused, sliding off something they couldn’t hold. He swung his crossbow around clumsily, and Aren grabbed the end of it and shoved hard. The man stumbled back one step, then another, off the edge of the terrace and into the black canyon below. He didn’t even scream. There was only a long silence and then a sound like a sack hitting the ground far, far away.

The third man fired.

The bolt passed so close to Aren’s head that he felt its wind, and buried itself up to the feathers in the wall behind him. The man was already fumbling desperately for another. Aren crossed the gap in two steps, put the knife into him under the ribs, twice, and held him while he slid down.

Then it was quiet on the terrace, apart from the fight below and his own ragged breathing.

Darius hadn’t moved. He stood with his sword half drawn, staring at the grey shape in front of him with the face of a boy who had just found out that ghosts were real.

"You." His voice shook badly. "You’re the Rag."

Aren didn’t answer. Down in the pit the Warden roared, Vivienne was still fighting, and nobody had fired, and that was enough. All he had to do now was leave and let Darius go home with a story he could never tell without explaining what he had been doing here.

He turned toward the shadows.

Darius came at him.

He didn’t use his sword, probably because he was too scared to think of it. He lunged with his empty hand and grabbed at the cloth over Aren’s face, fingers digging in, and for one second the back of his hand pressed against the bare skin of Aren’s cheek.

Aren felt the System break.

It was like a window shattering inside his head. The slippery second skin he had worn all night was simply gone, and he was just himself again, standing in the moonlight with a strip of cloth half torn off his face.

Darius stared at him for a long, disbelieving breath, and then the fear slowly drained out of his face.

"Zero?"

He started to laugh, a high, shaky laugh, the laugh of someone who had been terrified a moment ago and had just found out the monster was a mouse.

"The servant! The servant. The thief from the gutter who carries my practice swords." He stepped back, still laughing, and drew his sword all the way. "Oh, this is wonderful. Do you know what my father will do when I tell him? Do you know what the Ashgraves will do when they hear the Rag is a commoner thief who sneaks out at night to follow their daughter around?"

"Darius," Aren said quietly.

"Lord Holt, to you." The sword pointed at his chest, steady now. Darius was A-grade, Level 5, and he had been training with a blade since he could walk. "Kneel. Kneel the way a servant should, and maybe I’ll let you live long enough to be hanged."

Aren didn’t kneel.

He looked at Darius, at the sword, and at the edge of the terrace right behind Darius’s heels.

Darius would walk out of this Rift and talk. The Ashgraves would come for the thief who’d been stalking their daughter, and after him they would come for Nell, and for Mira, because she had stood up for him in front of the whole Academy.

It was a very short calculation indeed.

’You’re a bad investment, Darius. I’m closing your account.’

Darius raised his sword and stepped forward.

Aren looked down at the pale stone under Darius’s front foot, at the old cracked edge of the terrace, and thought one word.

Zero.

For one second, the stone under Darius’s feet had no hardness at all. It wasn’t stone anymore. It was dust and air and nothing, and Darius stepped forward onto nothing and kept going.

He never really understood what happened. Aren saw it in his face as he fell: pure surprise, mouth open, sword still raised for a cut that would never land. Then he was gone over the edge into the black canyon, and the only sound was his sword ringing once against the rocks on the way down.

In the same second, Aren’s own body went soft as paper. He didn’t move a single muscle. He stood perfectly still on the solid part of the ledge with his arms at his sides and didn’t breathe, and the second passed, and nothing touched him.

Then it was over, and he was alone on the terrace with three dead men and a hole in the edge of the stone.

[Darius Holt is no longer within range.][Hostility record closed.]

It was such a small message, and reading it made him feel very cold.

Down in the pit, the fight was ending.

He crouched behind the block and watched, because he simply couldn’t make himself leave until it was done. The Warden was down on one knee, long red cuts all over its body, the light inside it flickering. Vivienne stood in front of it with her armor cracked and blood on her face, her braid loose over one shoulder, breathing hard. She was alone. Nobody had shot anything, and nobody had helped.

She raised her sword toward the moon.

Moonlight poured down into the pit like water into a bowl. It gathered on her blade until the whole sword shone, until she shone, until it hurt to look at her. Then she swept it down, and a single crescent as wide as the pit itself left the blade.

It split the Warden in half from its head to the ground. The two halves fell apart slowly, and the red light went out.

Vivienne stood swaying in the white silence. Then she put her hand into the cracked chest of the giant, pulled out a burning red core the size of a fist, and absorbed it. Silver light rose from her in a column, straight up into the black sky.

[Primary Anchor has completed her Trial.][Vivienne Ashgrave: Rank F -> Rank E.][Source: Investment recorded. Hidden aid. Trial protected.][Mirror Return triggered.]

The small wheel turned in the dark beside him. He barely saw it as it slowed gradually and stopped on the widest segment.

[Result: x10.]

’Four people dead tonight, and the wheel gives me the smallest prize it’s got.’

[Return: Breakthrough energy x10.][Host’s Class Trial revealed: An Anchor must break through before the Host.][Trial completed.]

He took the six cores out of his pocket and absorbed them one by one behind the block, with blood drying on his hands. Heat climbed through him. Level 9. Level 10. And then something more, like a door opening in his chest and a great wind rushing through it.

[Host: Rank F -> Rank E.][Anchor slots: 1/2.]

Down in the pit, Vivienne looked up.

Her eyes moved slowly along the walls and the high terraces until they reached the fallen block on the far side. Aren had already pulled the rag back over his face and knotted it tightly with shaking fingers. He felt the System settle over him again, cold and slippery, and didn’t move.

She looked straight at his hiding place. Then she looked away.

He waited until she had climbed out of the pit and gone. Then he dragged the first man’s body to the edge and let it fall into the canyon after the others, and threw the crossbows down after it, along with the black bolt he pulled out of the wall. The Rift would take care of the rest. Rifts always did.

He walked home through the crack beside the old tannery an hour before dawn and scrubbed his hands at the dormitory pump until there was nothing left on them. Then he went up to his room, sat on his mattress, and looked at the full moon going pale over the city.

In his first life, he had killed a man to protect his money.

In this one, he had killed four to protect a secret.

The blue window hung in the dark beside him, patient as always.

[Anchor slots: 1/2.][No target selected.]