Chapter 35: THE MYSTERIOUS SPHERE

The figure squeezing through the damaged doorway had to turn sideways because the frame no longer opened properly. Sio’s body tensed before recognition arrived, while Angle’s hand had already shifted toward the weapon beside his bed. The innkeeper stopped halfway inside with a wooden toolbox beneath one arm and a folded sheet pinched between two fingers, looked at the three of them staring, then glanced behind himself as though another bounty hunter might somehow have followed him upstairs.

"You three look disappointed. If you’re expecting someone else, give them ten minutes. I’d like to repair this door before another idiot discovers what a shoulder does to old wood." He nudged the damaged frame closed with his heel and crouched beside the latch while Sio slowly settled back onto the mattress. Angle relaxed more reluctantly, keeping his hand near the bed for another few seconds before finally letting it fall.

Arch asked whether the bounty hunters were still downstairs, and the innkeeper pressed his thumb against the split wood before opening his toolbox. "For now. The tall one is still trying to figure out whether one of his teeth is supposed to face that direction. They’ll leave before sunrise." His amusement faded as he selected a replacement metal plate. "People here don’t particularly like strangers entering their homes and dragging guests outside."

Sio looked toward Arch almost automatically. Only a few hours earlier, the old man had treated anyone glancing at them twice as a possible informant, yet the innkeeper saying the town was safe appeared to settle something in him. Sio couldn’t explain why that bothered him, so he kept watching instead of saying anything.

The innkeeper eventually remembered the folded sheet and opened it across one knee. "I need the registered guest to acknowledge the damage. Door, wall, washbasin and part of the railing. They came here looking for you, but most of it isn’t your fault." He passed the page toward Arch, who accepted it while asking how badly the railing had been damaged. As the innkeeper explained that only one support needed replacing, Arch followed the man’s finger toward the repair total and never properly read the writing above it.

That made Sio lean forward. He had watched Arch reread maps he already knew, inspect medicine labels twice and once interrupt an entire conversation because the date written on a receipt did not match someone’s story. The man did not sign things casually. "You’re actually signing that without reading it?"

Arch glanced over with faint irritation and reminded him that it was only a damage form, but Sio pointed out that knowing what the innkeeper called it wasn’t the same as actually reading it. Arch finally looked down again, though only long enough to find the line he had been shown. "Unless he’s hidden ownership of a kingdom between the broken basin and damaged railing, I think I’ll survive." The corner of the innkeeper’s mouth moved at that, and Sio immediately narrowed his eyes. "You almost smiled." When the man denied it, Sio decided that somehow made him considerably more suspicious.

Angle lowered his gaze, unsuccessfully hiding the beginning of a smile, while Arch ignored both of them and signed. What bothered Sio more was how easily Arch returned the sheet without unfolding it farther. Angle noticed too; his eyes followed the paper until the innkeeper folded it and slipped it into his coat, but unlike Sio he didn’t joke about it.

The innkeeper went back to the door, and for a while the room settled into the scraping of metal against damaged wood. Sio rotated his shoulder carefully, feeling the ache left by the hunter who had tried pulling him through the doorway, while Angle checked the straps on his bag. Arch remained in the chair beside the window, looking more comfortable than Sio could remember seeing him since the escape.

When the innkeeper casually asked whether they wanted the room kept for another night, Arch answered before either of them could. "Probably several."

Angle’s hands stopped on the strap. He looked at his father for a moment before asking if he genuinely meant several days, reminding him that only yesterday he had called staying anywhere long enough to become predictable stupid. Arch shifted deeper into the chair and argued that yesterday they hadn’t known how this place reacted when armed strangers tried taking someone from one of its rooms.

Sio pressed two fingers against his sore shoulder. "They still found us on our first night."

"And failed to take us."

"They found the room, Arch. That’s usually the part you worry about."

Arch’s eyes moved toward him. "I heard you. The people downstairs protected us without asking who we were, what we’d done or how much our bounties were worth. Three hunters entered this building and left without us. Running immediately because something feels unfamiliar doesn’t automatically make it the safer decision."

Everything he said was reasonable, which somehow made Sio more uncomfortable. Arch’s words sounded like Arch, but his behavior around them didn’t. The man had spent days teaching Sio that safety was something you checked, not something you felt, yet now he was leaning back in an unfamiliar chair and talking about remaining somewhere their enemies had already located.

Angle’s gaze drifted toward the small brass instrument resting on the table and he pointed out that Arch hadn’t checked it since the fight. Arch followed his eyes and frowned as though he needed a second to understand what Angle meant. That tiny hesitation made Sio look at him more carefully. Arch eventually reached for the instrument, turned its inner ring beneath his thumb and studied the markings for several seconds before setting it down again.

"Nothing has changed," Arch said, but Angle remained watching him instead of the instrument and quietly told him that wasn’t how he normally checked it.

Arch’s expression tightened. "Are both of you going to spend the night investigating every decision I make?"

"I’m asking because you taught me to notice when someone’s habits change." Angle’s voice stayed calm, but Sio had already learned that calm did not necessarily mean relaxed when it came to him. "Yesterday you would’ve hated this place for feeling too easy."

For the first time, Arch didn’t immediately answer. His fingers tapped once against the arm of the chair and stopped. Sio had seen that habit enough to know it usually appeared when Arch found something he couldn’t dismiss as quickly as he wanted.

Eventually Arch looked toward the window. "Experience is supposed to change the way you judge risk. If the only decision caution ever allows you to make is leaving, then eventually you aren’t being cautious anymore. You’re just frightened."

Something shifted in Angle’s expression. It lasted barely a second, but Sio caught it before Angle looked down at the strap in his hands and began adjusting it again even though it was already tight. There was something older inside that conversation, something Sio didn’t understand enough to ask about, and for once curiosity lost to the feeling that he would be stepping somewhere he hadn’t been invited.

The innkeeper, who had been pretending the disagreement didn’t exist, tested the repaired latch twice before gathering his tools. "It’ll hold. Try not to let anyone hit it again."

Sio glanced toward Angle, grateful for something easier to talk about, and remarked that the warning felt more relevant to him. Angle looked over with tired disbelief and reminded Sio that he knew how door handles worked. When Sio pointed out that Angle had set a man on fire downstairs, Angle responded that the man had shot at them first. Sio considered that for a second before deciding that apparently doors were safe as long as they didn’t shoot first.

Angle’s mouth twitched despite himself, and even Arch exhaled something suspiciously close to a laugh. The innkeeper gave them all the expression of someone wondering why he had allowed any of them inside his building, tucked the signed paper into his coat and left with his toolbox.

The room became quieter after he left. Arch leaned his head against the chair and closed his eyes while Angle returned to his bag, though Sio noticed he kept glancing toward his father whenever he thought nobody was watching. Sio lay back on his own bed, but whatever tiredness had been sitting in his body refused to turn into sleep.

Instead, the bounty hunter’s words returned to him. The man had known that Sio kept his exits close, favored his right hand and apparently had reports detailed enough to prepare for the technique before they had ever met. Sio raised that same hand above his face and slowly flexed his fingers, feeling increasingly less proud of the discovery that had seemed so clever only a few days ago.

For some time, he had been embarrassingly pleased with the portal punch. Realizing he didn’t need to move his entire body through the opening had felt like the first useful thing he’d figured out on his own. It reduced the strain, allowed him to attack from awkward angles and had even helped him reach Vise before the man’s defense formed properly. One low-level bounty hunter had apparently needed a written report and a few minutes of observation to begin predicting it.

Angle eventually noticed him staring at his fingers and told him that if his hand started talking back, Sio should probably warn someone before agreeing to anything. Sio lowered it onto his chest and admitted he was realizing he might have spent the last few days congratulating himself for inventing the magical equivalent of punching through a window.

Angle considered that longer than Sio appreciated before admitting it wasn’t entirely inaccurate. Sio accused him of failing to protect his confidence, but Angle reminded him that he complained whenever Arch hid anything from him. "This would’ve been a compassionate lie," Sio argued. "Different category."

A small laugh escaped Angle before he could stop it, and Sio smiled too, although the feeling faded when another memory pushed forward. During the fight with Vise, Sio had watched his own body move while he remained trapped somewhere behind his eyes. The portals had appeared before he understood why they were needed, his movements had become frighteningly smooth and, most importantly, the same entrance had remained active while its destination shifted repeatedly across the battlefield.

He had been thinking about that ever since.

"When Vise had me, whatever was controlling my body understood the Claim better than I did," Sio said, turning his head toward Angle. "It wasn’t making another pair every time it wanted to attack from somewhere else. One side stayed open and the other kept moving."

Angle stopped fiddling with the bag and asked whether Sio had tried doing that since. Sio opened his mouth and immediately realized the answer was going to sound terrible, so he started counting on his fingers instead. "There was torture, then escape, then discovering Arch somehow forgot to mention that he had an entire son."

Arch opened one eye without lifting his head and insisted he had not forgotten. Sio pointed out that he’d had many opportunities to mention it, which earned a tired reply about how Arch hadn’t realized his family history was part of Sio’s travel itinerary. Sio ignored him and raised another finger. "Then the wasteland, the bounty, the hunters and whatever happened downstairs. So, technically, I’ve been occupied."

Angle watched him finish before asking, "So you haven’t tried?"

"That was a very detailed explanation."

"It was a detailed explanation of why the answer is no."

Sio turned onto his side and frowned at him, but there was no mockery in Angle’s expression. If anything, the seriousness bothered him more because it made the question feel less like criticism and more like disappointment.

Angle leaned his forearms against his knees. "You keep deciding the technique first. That’s probably why you’re stuck."

Sio’s frown weakened. "What does that mean?"

"When you fight, you decide you want to punch someone through a portal, so everything starts with the punch. You make the Claim serve an idea you’ve already chosen." Angle glanced toward Sio’s hand before continuing. "Whatever controlled you against Vise probably didn’t care about your favorite move. It needed your hand somewhere, so it moved the connection. It needed your body somewhere else, so it changed where the exit led."

Sio remained quiet while he turned that over. The irritating part was that it made sense. Angle noticed the change in his expression and told him to decide what he needed the ability to accomplish before deciding how it accomplished it. Sio had been treating the method like it was the power itself.

Sio stared at him for several seconds before narrowing his eyes. "That was annoyingly good advice."

"Don’t make it strange."

"I genuinely wasn’t prepared for you to be helpful."

Angle reached toward the cleaning cloth beside him, and Sio immediately raised both hands. "See? Violence. That’s the person I recognize."

Arch muttered something from the chair about regretting every decision that had led to the two of them sharing a room, and this time Angle’s laugh came easier. The conversation faded soon afterward, but the advice remained in Sio’s head.

He turned onto his back and thought about the impossible city. Every time he had reached it, his body had been asleep or unconscious while some deeper part of his awareness remained strangely active. He had never attempted to enter deliberately because deliberately knocking himself unconscious was exactly the kind of experiment Mira would answer by confiscating his freedom.

Sio closed his eyes anyway and called the familiar display forward until the familiar Claim text formed within the darkness of his awareness.

〔 CLAIM I — UNKNOWN ENTITY 〕

He held onto the words and waited, but the room remained stubbornly present around him. Angle shifted occasionally across the room, Arch breathed slowly from the chair and muffled voices continued traveling through the floorboards. Several minutes passed without even a hint of the impossible city.

Angle eventually noticed the strange stillness and glanced over from his bed. "What are you trying to do now?" There was enough suspicion in his voice to make Sio open one eye.

"Trying to get back into that place connected to my Claim," Sio admitted. He hesitated, then added, "At the moment I’m mostly proving that staring very hard at words isn’t a technique."

Angle studied him for a second, perhaps deciding whether that explanation was reassuring or worse. "Just don’t turn ’trying something’ into another reason Arch has to carry you."

Sio looked toward the chair. Arch still appeared to be resting, although Sio suspected he was listening to every word. "See, that’s unfair. I’ve only been carried because of serious circumstances."

"You make serious circumstances very easily."

Sio couldn’t find a good answer to that, which annoyed him enough to close his eye again and return his attention to the Claim.

The problem itself seemed simple enough: every previous visit had happened when his body lost consciousness while some part of his awareness remained anchored to the Claim. Medicine wasn’t available, asking Angle to knock him out would require explaining why, and involving Arch would almost certainly turn into a lecture long enough to make consciousness surrender voluntarily.

Sio considered the remaining option for several seconds, already knowing Mira could never be allowed to hear how he’d arrived at it. He filled his lungs and held his breath while keeping his attention fixed on the Claim.

At first there was only mild discomfort, but pressure gradually sharpened inside his chest until his body began demanding air. His heartbeat grew louder in his ears as he continued concentrating, allowing the room to become less distinct while the Claim remained fixed within his awareness.

〔 CLAIM I — UNKNOWN ENTITY 〕

His lungs burned badly enough that his fingers curled into the blanket, yet Sio refused to let his attention slip from the display. The voices below faded first, then the mattress beneath him, and somewhere near the edge of consciousness he had just enough time to think that Mira would kill him herself if the lack of oxygen didn’t manage it.

◇ ───────────── ◇

When awareness returned, there was no ceiling above him. Broken towers leaned across impossible streets beneath a sky that never settled into one color for long, while some buildings appeared ruined from a distance only to seem almost alive when Sio stared directly at them. Far beyond the streets, the enormous creature occupied the city like something the place had been built around rather than something that had entered it, and several of its eyes were already watching him.

Sio sat up slowly and pressed a hand against his chest. "That worked. Terrible news for my future decision-making." He looked toward the creature as though expecting judgment and added more quietly, "Mum is never hearing about this." The creature offered no opinion, which Sio appreciated, and he pushed himself to his feet before returning his attention to the reason he had come.

One portal formed beside his hand and another several feet ahead. Normally, that was where the process ended in his mind: entrance, exit, use them, close them and create another pair when he needed a different position. This time he left both openings active and concentrated on the farther one.

At first Sio tried dragging it sideways. The edge trembled but refused to move, and forcing more power into the attempt only increased the strain behind his eyes without changing anything. Angle’s advice returned, and Sio realized he was doing exactly what he’d been warned about. He was deciding the method before deciding what he actually needed.

He let the pressure ease and changed the way he thought about the problem. He didn’t need another destination because the destination already existed; he only needed the connection to lead somewhere else. The portal shivered under the change in thought and then slid several inches sideways, making Sio’s eyebrows rise before he carefully tried again. It moved farther without collapsing, although the strain behind his eyes increased almost immediately.

A grin began pulling at his mouth. "So you’ve been able to do that this whole time and nobody thought to mention it."

He was still trying to decide whether the pain was worth celebrating when movement near the creature caught his attention. One of the spheres circling its body had begun wobbling along its orbit. Sio stopped moving the portal and watched until the sphere steadied, then shifted the exit again to test whether the two were actually connected. The sphere jerked sideways with it, and several of the creature’s eyes turned in the same direction.

The reaction wiped the grin from Sio’s face. He looked from the sphere to the portal, knowing he should probably stop, but curiosity had already begun arguing that one more small movement would tell him more than staring ever could. "That’s probably unrelated," he muttered, despite no longer believing it.

Sio shifted the portal once more, this time only slightly, but the sphere responded far more violently than before and tore completely free from its orbit. He released the Claim immediately, yet whatever connection he had disturbed had already gone beyond anything he could stop.

The sphere shot across the impossible city while spinning faster and faster, strange ripples distorting the space around it. The creature moved after it rather than toward Sio, which frightened him more than he expected, and seconds later the sphere curved downward and struck the ruined street hard enough to throw him from his feet. Broken stone erupted across the road while dust rushed between the surrounding buildings and a deep vibration passed through the ground beneath his palms.

Sio coughed and pushed himself upright as the haze gradually thinned, revealing a crater where part of the street had been. The sphere remained at its center, still spinning, but after watching it for several seconds Sio felt the hairs along his arms begin to rise. He looked back toward the creature and realized it had stopped paying attention to the thing that had fallen.

Every visible eye was now fixed on him.