Chapter 96 An Earnest Request

I woke. I woke to neither a baby phoenix perched atop my collarbone, nor a Hero tugging at my side. Dim morning light streamed in through the window, the kind of half-light that lived only between night and day. There was an arm laid directly over my chest. It was warm. I turned my head.

Ash was nestled against my side. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing was slow and steady. She was asleep. It seemed that, for once, I had woken before the Hero.

The half-light found the side of her face. It found the scar along her jaw, and the line of her cheek, and the place where her lips parted a fraction with each slow breath. The Hero's face was steel, and it was soft besides. My gaze drifted lower, to the collar of her shirt, where it had fallen open in her sleep, and to the pale slope beneath it that rose and fell as she breathed. Warmth climbed my face. There was no reason for it. It was only Ash, and I had seen Ash a thousand times.

I lay there for a moment. For several long moments. I closed my eyes, but sleep would not come. There were too many thoughts, and they had all chosen to make my mind the battlefield for their war. A woman whose mark would not stay on one arm. A Great Hunt in the name of a God I did not recognize. A System screen that had begged, and gone dark before it could explain. There was too much to do, far too much to simply lie here. I pried myself from the Hero's grip. It was strong, even in sleep. I did it carefully and slowly, so as not to wake her.

It took some time to be free of her. When I was, the Hero's face creased. "Lys," she mumbled sleepily, and I feared that I had not been nearly as careful as I had tried to be. Then the Hero slowly settled again, and her breathing took its usual rhythm. I rose from the bed. It creaked. Ash was still asleep.

My eyes drifted to the pillow by the hearth, where Sol lay. I had checked the bond not long after I had woken. She had been asleep then. She was asleep now. The baby phoenix -though the word might not apply to her much longer- was a single large ball of gold and black. I moved toward her. Her breathing was just as regular as the Hero's. My hand reached out, and I poked one finger into her feathers. I did not know why I did it. It risked waking her for no reason at all. My finger sank into the feathers. Solara did not stir. I rose.

I held up my arms in the dim light. The white caught the half-light and seemed to glow. The black drank it in. I took a breath, and channeled a whisper of Ruin from my left. The Requiem stirred, and a dark tendril extended from my finger. It was odd, still, to be able to use either mark from either hand. It was rather like commanding one's right hand to move and watching the left answer instead. That first day, in that first dungeon, I had struggled with it. I had called the Cradle when I meant to call the Requiem, and nearly called the Requiem when I meant to call the Cradle. By now, I had some grasp over this new thing my Sigils had granted me.

There was still a point, however, to using each mark from the arm it was carved on. The range was greater. The Essence spent was less. And it was simply faster, without that half-second of instinctive hesitation. Perhaps all of these would mend themselves in time. I would need to learn how other Sigils managed it.

But to use one's mark from either limb was the smaller of the powers a Sigil held over a Line. There was a greater one. A Tenet. On that, neither Ash nor I had made any progress in the dungeons. We did not even know where to begin. And when we had asked Arianrhod, the woman had not answered. How frustrating. The old world had been simpler. Every [Spell] came with the knowledge of how to use it, even if one used it poorly.

"-too early."

"-doesn't matter."

I paused, and turned toward the door. A moment later, there were footsteps. Two pairs of them. Unremarkable on their own, but these footsteps had a certain weight to them, or a certain lack of it. The kind that came only from those trying to be quiet, and doing it poorly. My Essence flared. I raised my hand toward the door.

"-still asleep."

"-bloody wake them up then!"

I paused again. That last voice was loud, and crass, and I knew it well enough. I stepped forward and opened the door. On the other side was a boot, raised almost to the level of my shoulder. One that had been moments from trying to kick down our door. Ren stared at me, and I stared at her.

A month I had spent in that Crest resonance chamber, even as three weeks had passed outside. I had spent five more days with Arianrhod. Near enough to a month. The girl looked almost the same as when I had last seen her. Almost. Her hair had grown out, and those untamed red tangles now reached her shoulders.

"I would suggest you leave my door alone," I said dryly.

Ren's mouth hung open. She slowly lowered her leg. It was impressive she had raised it that high at all. Beside her, Edda groaned. Ren pointed a finger at me. "You- what the hell?! You're back! You're really back!" she said, loudly.

I winced. Ash and Solara were still asleep, and I would not have this girl's blabbering be the thing to wake them. I wondered, idly, who had told the two of them we were here at all. The guards at the gate, perhaps. It did not matter. "Lower your voice, fo-"

Ren stepped forward. She grabbed my shoulders, and for some reason, she shook me. Hard. "Holy shit, you're really back! I can't believe my eyes."

"Girl, unhand me," I demanded. I swatted her arms away, though I had not been quiet either.

Behind me, there was a chirp. A soft one. It was followed by another, louder. I turned. Solara had risen from her pillow. She swayed once, and fell over onto her side. Her beak opened for something that might have been a yawn, and a wisp of orange fire left it before it closed again. Then her golden eyes found me. Found Ren and Edda. She righted herself and chirped again, louder still.

On the bed, Ash groaned. Her eyes opened and found mine, and the sleep in them cleared almost at once. I turned back to Ren. "You are loud, girl."

Ren at least had the grace to look away.

"She did WHAT?"

"Ren, she already called you loud. Why do you have to yell anyway? They're sitting right in front of us."

I ignored the both of them, and attended to my stew instead. I took a spoonful and held it up to Solara. She regarded it with those golden eyes, and chirped once, and then her beak darted forward and came away with the single strip of meat that had been in the spoonful. The rest of the stew was untouched. I looked at the spoon. I looked at Sol.

"Your aim has truly gotten better, Solara."

Ash laughed beside me. "Here, Sol." She tossed a piece of meat through the air, and Solara chirped and leapt, all four wings beating, and caught it before it could fall. She even landed with some level of grace. "She's a lot more coordinated now, at least," Ash said.

"Indeed," I agreed.

We sat in one of the yards, on the grass. Apparently, a great many students preferred not to eat in the mess hall at all. They took their bowls and their bread and came out here, under the sky. Had I known this before, I would have done the same far sooner. The grass was a pleasant cold beneath us, and the sun beat down warmly. Ren had led us to a yard near the back of the Academy, where she claimed we would not be disturbed. So far, the girl had proved herself right.

"How the hell am I supposed to be calm?" Ren demanded. "Edda. Arianrhod. The Arianrhod just came in and snatched them away, and now they're part of the bloody Great Hunt?!"

The Arianrhod. There was a reverence to the way the girl said it. I had heard Aldric speak of the Archon with weight before. This was not that. This was the weight I had once heard from priests, when they spoke the names of their Gods. It should not have been possible, but Ren's voice had climbed higher still. I checked her, to make sure she did not have a secret second mark. One that had only to do with sound. There was not one.

"I am not sure why you are surprised," I said. "We were not alone when she made that declaration." Alisa had been there. And other demonbloods, if my memory did not fail me. They must have talked.

"Well…yes," Edda said slowly. She had her palms flat against the grass, and leaned slightly back on them. "It was just hard to believe. Claimed for the Great Hunt by one of the Hands of the Divine…." She shook herself.

"I thought that Princess had just lost her mind," Ren said. "Besides, she's been acting weird for a while anyway. Thought she and everyone else had gone crazy. What the hell were we supposed to believe? We waited for days and days, and then that door opened and you were both just gone. Then the Archon refused to let anyone else in the chambers. They're still closed. What the hell were we supposed to think?"

Ash and I shared a look. They had been waiting for days, judging by the strange constructions of pillows we had found outside the chamber doors. Waiting for us. Perhaps they had feared we had stepped inside never to come out again. And so they had waited, hoping that we would. Once, I would not have understood any of it at all, and it would have confused me entirely. Now, I understood some of it. It was only slightly less confusing for the understanding.

"I did not ask you to," I said. "I did not ask anyone to." Ren's brow furrowed, and I saw the heat climb her face. She opened her mouth. "But it was not entirely unwelcome."

Ren's mouth closed. She turned to Edda, whose eyes had gone wider. They shared a look between them -the kind the Hero and I sometimes shared- and then they turned to me. "Well…good. It better not be," Ren finally said.

There was silence for a time. Ash and I ate. Solara waddled off through the grass, and came to a stop before a particularly large white flower, one larger than she was. She attacked it with her beak. The flower bent, and steadied again when she let go. Solara stared at it and chirped, loudly, with her wings flared. Even I could not guess what that had been about.

But when Ren reached for her, Solara watched. Her golden eyes fixed on Ren's extended hand. Ren touched the top of Sol's head, and Solara did not smack the offending limb away. Ren pulled her hand back and held it to her chest. She smiled.

I stared. Every time I had seen these two together, Solara had smacked any attempts at touch away. It seemed they had reached some manner of…strange understanding. While we had been locked in the chamber, perhaps? I would have to ask Solara about it later. I paused. I would ask the bird? The other option was asking Ren. Yes, I would ask Solara herself.

Solara attacked the flower again. This time she did it by tucking her wings and rolling directly over it. This proved a far more effective assault than the one with her beak. I feared, distantly, that perhaps this was teaching my baby phoenix exactly the wrong lesson. It would be fine. Hopefully.

"So…what happened? After we were gone?" Ash asked. "We don't really know anything. We were-" She shrugged.

We had told the girls of our last five days, though they had seemed disinclined to believe it at first. They had accepted it only slowly. We had even explained something of the resonance chamber, vaguely, and they had accepted that. They had told us nothing of what had happened at this Academy.

"Well, quite a few things changed," Edda murmured. "And some of them are still changing." For some reason, she looked to Ren as she said it. "Mostly the entire Academy was just in shock. A legend from the stories showing up here, taking two students directly under her wing, and then…leaving." She shook herself. "Some people just thought you'd died in the chamber, and everyone was making up stories."

"Died?" I raised an eyebrow. "Are all of the students here so feeble that they will believe whatever last reached their ears?"

Ren shook her head. When she spoke, her voice was low. Low not just for Ren, but truly low. "Most didn't buy it, though. Some of the humans did, but the other humans-" She seemed to struggle for the words. "Well, the other humans put a stop to that. Told them to quit spreading stupid fucking stories if they weren't there to see it happen."

Now that was a surprise. "Other humans?" I asked.

"That's one of the things that's changed. Or that's changing, at least," Edda said. "A lot of the humans are…different with our kind now. There are still looks, every now and then. But it's nothing like it used to be."

"Different." Ash said the word slowly. "Let me guess. A lot of it is from people who were…unpleasant before?"

Ren and Edda nodded together at that. Ren muttered, "Never thought Shir and Minny would stop being twats for even one day let alone...."

I did not know who these 'Shir' and 'Minny' were, but I could guess what Ash was thinking. It seemed this Lena had heeded my words after all. Or had begun to heed them. I had not expected it. Not truly. A Queen set the tone for her court, and this Lena set the tone for much of this Academy. Even with a mark that no longer functioned, though I suspected she would take the Ink again sooner or later, as the Archon had said.

Solara continued her rolling as we ate. A breeze blew in from the west, pleasant against the skin. Students crossed the yard, and stopped, and pointed at us. They whispered to their friends. None approached, which was surprising, and kept Ren's words true. Even some of the Inkers stopped and did the same, and they stared far more openly than the students did.

"So, two days," Ren finally said. "That's some bullshit. The hells are you supposed to do in two days?"

"Get our affairs in order," Ash said. She had come closer to me over the course of our breakfast. An inch here, a half-inch there. She did not seem aware of it herself, but I had noticed. And pretended I had not. "It just means…" Ash shrugged. "I suppose it means saying goodbye," she said, and smiled. I knew Ash well enough by now to know that it was not just a smile.

"Goodbye…" Edda repeated. Ren was silent, her hands folded across her knees. "So you won't come back," Edda said, in a whisper I almost did not catch.

"That is not what she meant," I said. "She means only that we will be away for a time. Perhaps a long time. The risk of death in this Great Hunt is not nothing, but we will not meet our end there." Strictly speaking, I did not know that for a fact. I hardly even knew what this Great Hunt was, or its purpose. I only knew that these were the words these girls needed to hear now.

Ash was looking sideways at me, and she was smiling. Her hand came to rest on my thigh, and it was warm. She did not have to look so pleased with herself. I had learned something of how to handle these strange children by now.

"Well, I still don't bloody like it," Ren declared. She rose to her feet in a single motion and thrust her fist up at the sky, as though the sky had been the one to offend her. "Then I'm going with you! I'm a Sigil, same as the two of you. Hell, you're going to need other people when you get there anyway, so-"

Edda's hand shot out and closed on the back of her collar. Ren jerked to a halt mid-word.

"You're going to leave us again?" Edda said. Her voice was sharp. Sharper than I had ever heard it. As sharp as my own had ever been. "I'm sure Corin will love to hear that, when he gets back from his classes."

Ren looked down at her. Whatever she found in Edda's face, it took the wind out of her. Her fist lowered. Her shoulders followed it. She sat back down on the grass, slowly. "Right…sorry," she muttered. "Guess I got ahead of myself."

"Not for the first time," Edda grumbled. She folded her arms and looked away, at nothing in particular.

"Come on, Edda, I didn't mean it like-"

Edda did not turn back. I watched the girl's jaw. I understood something of this. Ren had left Edda and Corin once, to come to this Academy in the first place. They had followed. Now she planned to go somewhere else. Somewhere both going and following might mean death.

Something in what the girl had said tugged at a memory. Something I had heard once, and paid so little mind to that I could scarcely recall it now. "We will need…others?" I said. "What do you mean, girl?"

Ren looked from Edda to us. She looked between Ash and me. "Arian- she didn't tell you?" she said. I shook my head. Ash wore the same confusion I did.

"For the Great Hunt, you need a party. Companions, to be specific," Edda answered. "You need four. No more, and no less. It's always four. Most people already have their parties by the time they reach Azareth. Though the books say some find their companions in the city itself. But you need four." She looked over at Sol, who was presently pecking at a rock. The rock broke beneath the might of her beak. "Bonded familiars aside," she added.

Beside me, Ash had gone still. Her hand had not left my thigh, and her breathing had not changed. But the Hero was very still. I did not understand why. Nothing about what Edda had said should have made her react so.

"That's-" Ash sighed. "She didn't tell us anything about that."

This Arianrhod was truly a vexing woman. She wished us to compete in this Great Hunt, and would tell us nothing of it. I would need to visit the Athenaeum, and soon. Perhaps I should simply ring the bell now, and demand my answers from the woman herself.

There was loud chirping. I looked across the yard, and saw Sol. She was chirping up at a student who had reached down and brushed at her feathers. Sol had permitted the gesture, so there should be no dang-

It was Alisa Wulfram. I did not recognize her at first. The girl's fine uniform had been worn down into something close to rags. Her blonde hair was tangled, as though she had not brushed it in some time. Dark circles sat beneath her eyes. When she rose from Solara, she swayed. Her gaze met mine. She took three steps forward.

"You're back," she said.

"I am," I said. Ash shifted beside me. She must have seen it too, that something was wrong with this picture.

"And you were chosen for the Great Hunt," Alisa said.

Slowly, I nodded.

Alisa Wulfram bit her lower lip. She stared at the ground between us, and drew a breath deeper than the one before it. I watched something build in her. I had seen this before. I had seen it in Ash, before she asked me to heal Corin. I had seen it in Sara, before she asked me to make Marin bloom again. I wondered what this Alisa was going to ask of me now.

Alisa looked up, her chin raised. Then her chin came down. I had seen it come down exactly once before, in the stands of an arena. Then, she did the last thing I ever expected this girl to do. She lowered herself into something resembling a bow.

"I'm going with you," she said. "I'm joining the Great Hunt…if you'll have me."