Chapter 113: The Big Fish Eats The Small Fish

I stood up from the edge of the bath and held out my right hand.

’Moon’s Door.’

The bracelet was simply there, the way a word is there once you remember it. I slid it onto my wrist and felt it settle against the bone.

’Quickly. Before someone needs the bathroom for its intended purpose.’

I poured spiritual power into the bracelet.

It did not trickle in. It drained, a steady pull on my chest like a tide going out. Behind my closed eyes, I built the place I wanted, piece by piece.

The shore.

Lee’s camp.

The air in front of me trembled.

Lines appeared first, thin and silver, drawn in the empty air by an invisible hand. They crossed and curled into sigils I could not read, magical tracings that knitted together until they formed a tall, narrow door. It hung a few inches above the damp floor, humming faintly.

The door swung open.

Grey fog spilled out of the gap, cold and soft, curling around my ankles. Beyond it there was nothing at all, only a pale, shifting depth that seemed to go on forever.

’Well. No turning back.’

I stepped inside.

The pull on my spiritual power doubled the instant my foot left the stone. It felt as if someone had pulled a plug out of the bottom of my spirit.

The fog closed around me, my sense of direction dissolved, and the world became a long, silent fall through something that was neither air nor water.

Then the door spat me out.

I hit the ground on my hands and knees, and wet grit bit into my palms. Cold wind slapped my face. The smell of the swamp rolled over me, and I knew without looking that I was on the shore.

I coughed once and pushed myself upright.

’Status.’

Spiritual Power: 8/250

"Pfft..."

A dry laugh escaped me before I could stop it. Two hundred and fourty two, gone, down to a final flicker.

’If I had not done that experiment, I would have been dead right now.’

I did not have to wait long. Back in the Spirit Temple, the fragment of me I had left behind stirred among the pillars and began to work. A thin silver thread of fog slipped from it, flowed down into my Core, and fed it steadily, drop after drop.

I stood still and let it. A minute passed, slow and quiet. The emptiness in my chest filled again, warm and heavy, until the number settled at full.

I rolled my shoulders and looked up.

The sky above the shore was packed with black clouds, boiling and low, and lightning cracked through them in long white veins, lighting the whole beach for a heartbeat before dropping it back into dark. Between the clouds, crimson moonlight bled through in thin red threads, staining the water the color of old wine.

I started walking toward the tent.

Like every other day, nothing moved on the shore. No Unorthodox creature prowled the rocks, no wing cut the sky, no shape stirred in the shallows. That should have felt peaceful.

It did not.

It made my skin crawl, if I was honest. After all, this realm was the embodiment of a single, brutal idea: The Big Fish Eats The Small Fish.

’Do not think about it. Walk.’

A few more steps and I saw them.

Two figures sat on a flat rock above the shore, shoulders close together, their backs turned toward me. It was the rock Lee used as a lookout, a low ledge that rose about ten feet above the mud.

Their voices drifted down on the wind.

"...Well, I don’t know. I think we can trust him," Mary said.

"Hmm. I think so too," Sera replied. "But we have to be careful, after all."

I stopped.

A warm, mischievous feeling rose in my chest. I slowed my steps, placing each foot with care on the wet sand. Behind them, the rock rose in a rough slope, and I climbed it without a sound, one hand on the stone, my boots as light as a cat’s.

They did not notice.

Mary was looking at her hands. Sera had one knee drawn up, her chin resting on it, lost in thought.

Neither of them had the faintest idea that a boy was standing three paces behind them, holding his breath, grinning like a lunatic.

I took one slow, silent breath.

"Boom!" I shouted.

"Ahh!!!"

Both of them shot upward from the rock as if it had been struck by lightning. Their arms flailed, their legs kicked, and they tumbled over the edge in a tangle of limbs and cloth. A double thud echoed from below as they hit the ground.

Ten feet. It was not a cliff, just a modest drop to the shore. For ordinary people it might have broken a bone, but they were Awakened, and a fall like that would not even leave a bruise.

I leaned over the edge and looked down.

Sera was sprawled on her back, her hair across her face. Mary sat beside her with one hand pressed flat against her chest, taking deep, shaking breaths.

"Edmund!" Sera shrieked.

"What the hell are you doing?!"

I laughed.

I could not help it. I rubbed the back of my head with one hand and my shoulders shook, and a long, helpless laugh rolled out of me, the first real one since the haircuts.

"You should have seen your faces."

"I will kill you," Sera said, pushing her hair out of her eyes.

"You said that when I was seven."

"I meant it then, too!"

Mary said nothing. She only kept breathing, in and out, her cheeks faintly pink, glaring at me with the kind of silent fury that was somehow scarier than Sera’s shouting.

The commotion had carried.

From the tent, a flap tore open, and two figures burst out at a run. Lee came first, a knife already in his hand, his eyes sweeping the shore. Arthur followed close behind, breathless, his blonde hair a mess.

Lee stopped short when he saw me. His shoulders dropped, and the knife lowered.

"Oh. It’s you!"

He sheathed the blade and, without breaking stride, grabbed Arthur by the hand.

Arthur flicked his free wrist.

A green vine shot out from his palm, whipped through the air, and wrapped itself around the trunk of a dark tree close to the rock with a snap. Lee held on, Arthur held the vine, and together they swung in a wide, swooping arc over the mud, boots skimming the ground, and landed on the rock beside me with a thump.

"Show-offs," I said.

"Efficient," Arthur corrected, grinning.

Below us, Mary and Sera had already made their own way up.

They did not bother with vines. They simply bent their knees and jumped, using only the strength of their bodies, and landed on the rock in a pair of soft, controlled thuds.

Sera dusted off her sleeves with exaggerated dignity. Mary smoothed her hair and looked at me.

For a moment, all five of us stood there on the high rock, the lightning flickering over our faces and the moonlight bleeding through the clouds.

They were all breathing a little hard. They were all looking at me.

And then, one after the other, they leaned closer.

"Well," Sera said. "What’s the news?"