Chapter 104 The Silver Line.

We found an empty practice yard. It was not difficult. The evening sun had ended its descent while we had been in the mess hall, and now only lantern light lit the Academy. Students watched us as we passed. They stared, as they always did. None of them stared with fear. I had seen fear on a hundred thousand faces, and I saw it in none.

We sat on the grass. I released Solara onto the cool earth. She had been fidgeting, even on my head. That was strange. She had always settled on my head and done it calmly, but now she would not stop moving. I checked the bond, and found nothing wrong with her. There was only the great enthusiasm I had felt before. Solara let out a mighty chirp, and began her rolling at once. I watched her go.

"I think it's the cake," Ash whispered next to me. "I feel a little- well, I feel like I have more energy than I normally do too. Might have been a bit too sweet."

"I see," I said. It was strange, for I felt none of this excess energy myself. A difference between our biologies, perhaps. But if it was only the effect of food, then I would hope it wore off soon. Solara had rolled a dozen paces into the distance already. I would keep an eye on her.

"Speaking of that cake," I said. "You knew, Hero."

Ash looked at me. Her face was innocent. Her face was too innocent. "Knew what?"

I narrowed my eyes at her. Would she make me say it?

Ash smiled. "I had a feeling, yeah. They're not exactly the best at keeping things quiet. Happy to be right."

"And you did not warn me," I said.

"And ruin it? Never."

"My own retainer," I said, "conspiring against me."

"Conspiring for you. What did you say again? There's a difference, and it's not a small one, or something?"

She had returned my own words to me. All of my retainers were far too clever for their own good.

I turned from her and to the four who had accompanied us, though my gaze was for one girl in particular. Alisa Wulfram, who bore a mark in a color I had seen nowhere else in this new world, and I had seen hundreds of marks by now. One who had guarded its power jealously. "Girl," I said, "show me." I folded my arms, and waited. Ash waited beside me.

Alisa stepped away from the other three. She reached for a small bag she had carried slung over one shoulder, and pulled from it papers. A dozen of them. "Can someone help me set these up?" she asked.

"Set these... up?" Ren asked, obviously confused. I shared the confusion.

"I just need them to form a small perimeter," Alisa said. "It would go faster if I had someone to-"

"I'll do it," Corin said at once. He walked forward and took half the stack from Alisa. "How do you want me to...?"

"Just a square around us," Alisa said. "I don't think there are enough for anything too big. Just make sure it's all connected," she said, and stepped back. Corin took one side, and Alisa took the other, and between them I could only watch.

They started setting the pages down on the grass, one by one. And only then did I see that the pages were not blank. There was writing on them. The same two symbols, on each page, copied over and over. Symbols in a language I had thought did not exist in this world, for I had found no reference to it at all in the Athenaeum. I had seen it in only one other place, carved on a door that had led to a shard of the System.

"Ash, this is-" I whispered.

"I know," Ash said. "I don't know much of it, but..."

This girl was using the Runic tongue. Or rather, she knew two symbols in that tongue. The first was the symbol for wall. The second, more complicated than the first, was the symbol for force. I watched in silence as the two of them laid a square perimeter of paper around us.

"What the hell is all this?" Ren asked.

Edda was hunched over one of the papers, staring at it with her head tilted. She reached out to poke it.

"Hey, don't move that out of place!" Alisa said. "It won't work if you do."

Edda withdrew her hand after that. I watched as Alisa regarded us and took a deep breath. Her silver mark glowed in the lantern light. "My mark lets me... make these symbols. And then I can use them. It's- I hate to admit it, but it's really not much," she said, and took another breath. She turned and touched one of the papers, and I felt the weight of Essence leave her. And with the weight came its taste, for there was always a taste. This one was of something old and vast. The feeling of stepping into a river, only to find it had been an ocean all along, and now you were drowning.

Alisa let out a gasp, and the runes around us all lit with silver light. I suspected what was going to happen before it did. It surprised me all the same. Silver light rose from the pages, eight feet into the air. It stayed there, forming a wall all around us.

"What in the fuck is this?" Ren asked, stepping forward and touching one of the walls. She pressed it again, this time with both hands. "It feels like an Axiom, but..." She trailed off.

I stepped to the side, toward the nearest wall. It was solid. I took a breath, channeled Essence into my fist, and struck it. Not hard, but with some force. The entire section of silver wobbled once, and did not vanish. "How interesting," I whispered. My first hunger, my sharpest, prodded at me now.

I looked down and inspected the two runes that formed the foundation of this barrier. Ash was leaning in beside me in the next breath.

"What do you think?" Ash whispered.

"Her penmanship leaves much to be desired," I murmured. And it was true. The symbols were correct, but they were uneven. Each page held slight dissimilarities from the one before or after it. A brush stroke too thick here, too thin there. A curve more curved on one page than the next. Even the pages themselves differed, now that I looked more closely. All of it would matter, if this worked anything like the runes I knew. The ones I had used to send us to this strange future.

I reached down and pressed a thread of my own Essence into the nearest page. Nothing happened. The symbols did not so much as flicker. Not that I had expected them to. I had drawn symbols like these once or twice in Hamel, in the dirt, in idle hours, and the world had refused me then as well. Perhaps they answered only to the girl's mark.

I rose, and Ash rose with me. I approached Alisa, who had bent forward, her hands on her knees. The girl was breathing heavily. She looked up as I approached. It seemed this power of hers carried its cost. "What do you know of this power, girl?" I asked.

She straightened immediately at that, though she did so less steadily than she would have admitted. She looked around, then at me. "I- I just have these symbols in my head. And I have an idea of how they work. So I have to draw them, and use my mark to make something happen. Depending on how I arrange them, different things can happen."

Symbols in her head. That was how the girl described them. As if she did not know a language so much as carry some words of it, imprinted upon her soul. With the mark, perhaps. How interesting, and how strange. Morrigan would have liked to see this strange power. For while I might have been the strongest of my era, I had not been the greatest at everything. At the Runic Tongue, she was greater even than I. Without her, I-

I winced, and collected myself. Alisa must have noticed, for she frowned. I ignored it. The girl spoke again before I had the chance to. "I apologize," she said. "It's- my mark really isn't anything special, compared to some of the ones I've seen. I can do this-" she gestured vaguely at the walls around us, "-and a few more things. I said it would be useful, and it would be, but-"

I ignored her. "Does your power work only on these... pages?" The girl's mouth closed.

Alisa slowly shook her head. "I just find it easier to draw them on paper. I can draw them on anything, if I have the time."

Now that was more interesting still. In my time, these runes had been used in combat only seldomly. Only for traps or defenses one could design far in advance, for drawing any rune of significance required time no battle would give you. She had found something akin to a solution, however primitive. "I will give you something, and you will draw it," I said.

The girl frowned. "You- what? It does not work that way. It's not art-"

I held out my hand. "Give me the tool you used to draw these. I do not like to repeat myself."

The girl reluctantly obliged. From her small satchel she pulled a quill that required no ink at all. It required only Essence, and then the quill would write. A shame that such a thing had never existed during my time. She gave me a blank page, and I sat down on the grass and drew.

The others all crowded around me as I did. They shared whispers that I ignored, and had questions I did not answer. This required concentration, and I would not waste mine. It took three minutes, perhaps four. I covered the entire page in four complex symbols, each rendered large, and with the exact degree of precision they demanded. I held it up to Alisa. She was staring at it with her mouth wide open.

"Try to use this," I said, "with your mark."

Alisa continued to stare. She stared so long that I had to thrust the paper out toward her. She took it, kept staring for a moment, and slowly set it down on the grass. "Will that really work? What does it do?"

"It might. And if it does work, then it will do nothing that is dangerous," I said. "Do as I asked."

The symbols I had drawn, in the exact arrangement I had drawn them, would raise another barrier around their point of origin. One far more durable than the girl's, and requiring only a single page rather than this strange improvisation of a dozen. I did not tell her so. I wanted to see what happened if she tried without knowing.

Ash stood next to me as we watched. "Can you read it?" I murmured.

"Not really," she said. "Think I know what it does, though. I've broken a few of those before."

I sighed. There was no doubt that she had, considering how much of my fortress she had gone through. Had Morrigan been alive then, she would have wept. Then again, I supposed she had been alive then. Somehow.

Ren, Edda, and Corin crowded around the girl. Alisa put her hand on the page. The dark, faintly purple ink began to glow with silver light. It glowed for only a moment. Alisa let out a gasp and almost fell over entirely. The silver light flickered once. A single silver spark caught somewhere on the page, and died. The light went out, and Alisa fell onto her side.

Ren and Edda were at her side in an instant. "Hey, hey, you okay?!" Ren demanded, helping the girl up.

"I'm fine," Alisa said, waving the arm away. She rose under her own power, and did so more shakily than before. "What- what was that?" she asked. "It was working! I can't believe it was working so something should have happened, but-"

"But?" I prodded.

"It felt like trying to fill an ocean with a cup of water," Alisa murmured. "I don't know how you know these symbols, but- but how was anyone supposed to use something like that?"

How fascinating. The formation I had given her was complex, certainly, but most of the complexity lay in the drawing, and not in the raw power required. Had I overestimated the girl, or underestimated the power this barrier needed? I did not know the answer. And the not knowing only made me more curious.

"Does-" Alisa looked down at the page, then at the silver walls around us. "Does this mean I cannot come with you?" she said. "I can try again, if you-"

Ash stepped forward and held out her hand. "We said you could, remember?"

Alisa looked at it, and slowly took it. Then she looked toward me. "I am not a liar, girl," I said. "Even if your mark could do no more than stir a cool breeze to enjoy beneath the summer sun, I would still take you with us." It seemed this strange girl had believed this a test, all this while.

Alisa slowly nodded. "But I will give you far more to test in the days to come," I said, "and you will do what I ask, and you will do it diligently."

"Does my rival mean to-"

"Your rival," I said the word reluctantly, "believes there is far more to your mark than you think." I looked at the mark on her arm. A Line. Only a Line, and yet a Line that somehow gave the girl some primitive knowledge of runes and let her wield them. I suspected it would never be as simple as giving this girl the mightiest of formations I knew and having her replicate them. Still, even if all she could ever do was make these barriers, that was enough. "You have a good mark. You should be proud of it."

The girl's eyes widened. She looked down at her own arm, where the silver Line sat. She looked at it for some time. "Okay," she said. "I suppose I cannot truly complain, since I was the one who asked to go with you in the first place."

Solara let out a loud chirp. Everyone turned, and I saw her half a dozen feet to the side, outside the barrier. She was pecking at it with fury. She chirped again and pecked more furiously still.

"Oh, I'll take the barrier dow-" Alisa said.

Solara's four wings flared. She launched herself. Up, and up. The barrier stood perhaps eight feet high, and Solara cleared all eight in the span of two seconds. She crested the silver wall, and the moonlight caught her as she came down. Her golden wings shone in the light. Her dark wings took the night in, and held it.

I could only stare. She had just flown. She had just flown a far greater distance than I had ever seen her fly. She was too high up to clearly make out, but her golden eyes were fixed on me. I was sure of it. Then she was gliding down. Elegantly.

I held out my arms. Solara glided, and smacked me in the forehead. She fell into my cupped arms and let out a chirp.

"That was awesome, Sol," Ash said, grinning at the bird. Solara only looked confused, as if she could not understand why the Hero was praising her now of all times.

Everyone else crowded around my hands. Solara took in their stares and preened under them, raising herself on her tiny talons and puffing out her chest. Then her beak opened, and from it fell an insect. One Ash had once named a butterfly. Its body was a mix of orange and black, and it squirmed on my arm where it had fallen. So this was why Solara had not simply tried to destroy the barrier with her flame. She had wanted me to see her newest prey.

"You have done well, Solara," I said. "That beetle was a trifling thing, compared to this butterfly." Solara puffed up further, and let out a loud chirp.

"I uh-" Ren looked at the butterfly, which twitched once, fell from my arm, and was lost somewhere in the grass. "Think you might be teaching her the wrong things."

I raised an eyebrow at her. Solara turned toward her and chirped, angrily. Ren raised her hands in defeat. The others laughed. I did not find it displeasing.