PreCursive

  Later that night, Grey and I were rexing in his room. The sun was setting, and his room was lit by flickering dlelight by now, casting everything in dang shadow. Azarus had called an early night, g some business he had early in the m. I don’t even know how it had happened, but Grey and I had migrated to his room where he had broken out a bottle of liquor. I didn’t typically drink much, but I wasn’t opposed to a bit of social drinking if the situation called for it.

  I was sloug in ara chair that Grey had, sitting at a small er table. Grey was across from me, idly staring off into space. He’d been like that for a while, holy. I guess he was a ptive drunk. Speaking of, I reached doicked up my gss with a spsh of aremely dark liquor in it. Taking a sip of it, I grimaced at the extremely powerful taste but tinued drinking anyway.

  “God, that stuff is rank,” I said, setting my gss back down.

  Grey broke out of his trance long enough to let out a shh. “Gnollish liquor. An acquired taste of Azarus’s that he’s been f on me. I must admit, I have been growing a taste for it.” He said, pig up his own gss and taking a sip. He grimaced himself. “Somewhat.”

  “Yeah, like a mold,” I muttered.

  My mentor, I suppose you could call him, merely hummed.

  We sat in silence for a short spell befrey broke it.

  Stirring, he caught my attention. Once he had it, he spoke up. “I believe I know where to go from here, Nathan. At the very least, I have an inkling of an idea.”

  “For what?” I asked idly, swirling the liquid in my gss idly.

  “In regards to your Professions…and our potential escape,” Grey said seriously.

  His words sent a shiver down my spine, maki up and pay full attention. “Go on,” I said cautiously.

  “The way I see it,” Grey said, drumming his fingers oable. “There are two objectives we o fulfill if we are to escape. The first, is we o destroy the trol ste that is bound to our colrs.”

  “Well, yeah I suppose,” I said fusedly. “That makes sense, but I didn’t know it tion. If it was that easy in order to stop being a sve, why haven’t yht it up before?”

  Grey shook his head. “Merely destroying the trol ste would not stop me from being a sve. If you’ll recall, a sve binding has two pos to it. One is the colr itself, which possesses the death and trag entment. The other is the actual brand itself, which possesses the Status binding effed the identification entment that you luckily do not have. The brand itself is symbolically lio the colr, but it does not require it to fun. These two separate entment cores work together in order to bind a sve. Destroying the ste would, however, prevent Magnus from remotely exeg both of us after our escape. As well as plig our re-capture through ease of trag.”

  “So, you just want to escape then? At least for now?”

  “I believe it’s our best option, yes. My uanding is that the situation in the Kingdom is not yet dire enough that my presence wouldn’t calm matters, at least for a time. My Status, and thus my strength would still be bound. However, if I could have access to the higher-order tools I possess at the Academy, it would be much easier for me to devise a method of breaking my sve binding.” Grey answered soberly, despite the alcohol that he was even now studying in his gss.

  “I see,” I said quietly. I guess it must have been painful for him to reach this decisioe myself, I felt a pang of shame. I knew Grey had been hoping I would ma some kind of crazy ability to instantly free him from his binding, and I hadn’t. Sure, I had maed some kind of extremely iing new Profession, but it seemed like a stretch that it was going to save us. I guess the wonder of Aetherial Melding was wearing off frey, ay was setting in. I studied my gss in silence for a moment, before raising my head back to Grey. “And the sed thing we need?”

  “What we need, is to create the ditions that would facilitate our escape,” Grey said, rising from his own ption of his gss aing my eyes. His gaze was surprisingly cold, sending a shiver down my back. “I believe I knoe’ll break the wards.”

  “Break the wards? Whies?” I asked tentatively. “What would that do?”

  “Addersfield possesses a standard set of settlement wards. In my time in this wretched town, ae my bound Status, I’ve felt them out gradually. It is a stroke of luck that my sve binding did not also bind my higher-order senses, honed over many years. The wards here are nothing special, merely a set of monster-repellent wards and intrusion wards. They encircle the town, precisely along the borders of the wall. Walls in small settlements such as this are almost always built along the ward boundaries.”

  “You didn’t say what breaking them would do,” I said quietly, with a growing sense of trepidation.

  “When monster-repelnt wards are broken,” Grey tinued, ign me. “It acts as a beaonsters have far keener Aetherial sehan most give them credit for. They are well aware of zohat have rge trations of Aether that they could devour, if only they weren’t being repelled by powerful wards. This does two things. With the first, the shift in ambieher acts as an artificial spawning period, resulting in an increased produ of monsters in the area. With the sed, it draws those moo the former area like moths to a fme.”

  My mouth opened involuntarily, listening to Grey. I didn’t speak though.

  “They e in waves, at that point,” Grey said somberly. “Waves upon waves of monsters, be and small. They e until they have devoured every source of Aether they find in that previous void. Every person that lives and breathes. This process is well doted and known as the Breakage Effect. It is also…an iionally reized war crime to deliberately infli others.”

  I looked back down at my drink, so I wouldn’t have to meet Grey’s intense gaze. “And the punishment?”

  “Uniterally agreed upoion. In all territories, in all nations.” Grey finished grimly.

  We sat in silence for a time. I broke it.

  “And you want to do this?” I whispered. “What about all the other people in town?”

  Grey grew suddenly furious in a way I had never seen before. He pouhe table in anger with the hand holding his gss, crag it. “They be damhere are no is in this den of fools, Nathan! No families raising children, no simple traders trying to make a living! Everyone here was handpicked by House Savoy from their svishly loyal retainers in order to support their heir! All of them to the st are profiting from the broken backs of human refugees they’ve colred and bound! Stolen is, and for what?! So he feed them to the monsters every month in order to satiate his sick desire?! Piss on the people of this towhem be fed to the monsters!”

  I stared at Grey’s heaving form for a moment. “It’s not that simple, man,” I said, pained. “You know it isn’t. What about Van? Vandimar? He’s one of the dwarves of this town, and he doesn’t like svery much himself. He’s even trying to save up money in order to free Bleddyn as well. And what about Gren, the mert that drove us to Rhoscara?”

  “What about him?” Grey said bitterly. He picked up his gss and threw back what was left in it, ung of how some had seeped through the new cracks.

  “He’s based out of Addersfield for now, and he’s an all-right guy. He took a risk on Azarus aaking us to a city that’s so anti-svery. He could have lost a huge k of his livelihood if we’d been discovered. Look, my point is this. I get that this town is probably packed full of assholes that don’t give a shit about us, or any other sve. But we don’t know everyone here. There are probably plenty of people in town that don’t deserve to beonster chow, and I personally know a couple. And,” I said, leaning forward. “That isn’t even ting all of the other sves. They sure as hell don’t deserve being caught up in all of this.”

  “Of course they don’t,” Grey said, frowning. “I’m not a monster, Nathan. I’d po escape with them as well. With the trol ste destroyed, they follow us back to the Kingdom. In the chaos of a Ward Break, the guards will be too busy trying to survive to care about the sves. On the Kingdom, I’ll personally take responsibility for them until I discover a means to break their bindings as well.”

  “And Gren and Van?” I said, matg his frown.

  “They are free to apany us as well. I don’t hate dwarves blindly, Nathan. Merely those that are tent to suffer the existing franchise of e. Ah, dammit.” Grey said, finally notig the spill he had made. He grabbed a rag that was sitting on a nearby dresser and began to mop it up.

  “Look, why do we eveo break the wards if we’re already pnning to destroy the trol ste? ’t we just…escape with the rest of the sves after we’ve dohat?” I said, waving a hand aimlessly.

  Grey shook his head. “If we leave the guards funal, they’ll catch us easily. Azarus, and anyone else we may end up taking with us, may be able to defend roup during our travels. But he would not be able to defend us from the ey of the Addersfield guard plement. No, we o occupy the guards, and a Ward Break is the best option avaible to us.”

  I leaned ba my chair a out a long sigh. “All right. Okay. I’m not saying I agree with this yet, but how do we do that? Break the wards? Hell, how do we evehe trol ste?”

  “Both be achieved through the same device. A Ward Breaker. A highly illegal device, the design is a remnant of the st major flict between the Kingdom and the Principality. It could be used to both break the wards and the trol ste. I know how to strue, and I teach you how. The ease of use your Aetherial Melding provides means you should be able to create one. Well, after I give you a grounding in Abjuration.” Grey said, amending himself.

  “Why ’t you make one? I mean, they already have you making a bunch of stuff already.” I said, waving at his desk that was strewn with a variety of tools.

  “I ot, unfortunately. The specifiy binding prevent me from directly ag in a mao free myself. Fortunately, that binding does not keep me from either speaking of how to escape or from ily ag to free myself. In this case, teag another how to escape. My binding is suspiciously le in that ard. Either Pringuis was abnormally careless with the design of my binding, or…”

  “Or?” I asked.

  “Or the blind spots in my binding are another indication that I was always meant to escape at some point. Perhaps at a much ter date, when I could not prevent the Kingdom from burning down around me. Damn that dwarf.” Grey finished, gl.

  “I see,” I said quietly. I ’t imagine how much that stung, being strung along like that. “What’s Abjuration, then?”

  Grey shook his head as if to clear the thoughts from it. He grabbed anss from the tray that held the liquor we had been drinking and filled it with more dark brown booze. Cradling the gss, he answered me. “One of the thirteen schools of Magecraft. It primarily deals with defensive spells, such as ward crafting and other barriers. As you have yet to pass the first threshold and gaihe ability to produce Mana, you would not be able to practice the art. But you would still be able to learn the fuals of the subject. You should be able to craft the Ward Breaker through Enting after you have a suffit background in the subject. We’ll o focus heavily on teag you both Entment and Abjuration if we have any hope of success, however.”

  I took a deep breath and held it for a moment, before breathing out. “Just…let me think on it, all right? I’m down for learning Enting and, uh, ‘Abjuration’, but I’m not sure about iionally killing everyone iire town just yet. Let me sleep on it, all right?” I said, standing up from the table with a slight wobble. I wasn’t drunk, but I was at least tipsy.

  Grey looked up at me somberly. “I uand, Nathan. I truly do. It’s not an easy decision to make, but remember this. There are no true non-batants in this town, merely colborators at the absolute best. Even if it’s a difficult decision, we have limited options, and the lo takes for us to escape, the lohe bloodshed in the Kingdom will tihe very foundations that hundreds of thousands, nay, millions rely on could e crumbling down if we linger here too long.”

  “Yeah.” I sighed. “I’ll…keep that in mind.” Leaving Grey to stare into his gss forlornly, I left the table and the room altogether. Asding the stairs, I opehe door to my room and flopped into my bed without ging out of my clothes.

  Staring up at the ceiling, I only had ohought running through my mind.

  Fuck.

  I didn’t get much sleep that night.