Chapter 28 Rank Two
When Anaya walked into the kitchen the next morning, she stopped dead and stared at Rolan. He stood at the kitchen table, smiling at her. Her hair was still mussed from sleep, her apron not yet tied. She looked…
He felt his breath catch in his throat and quickly looked back down at his work.
“Are you whistling?” she asked.
“It’s a beautiful morning!” Rolan smiled and scraped chopped potatoes into a sizzling pan.
“And you’re cooking? You can cook?”
“I’m not an idiot, you know,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve seen Evaine make these every morning.”
Anaya gave a suspicious look.
“You were right about my chopping skills though,” he said. “Chopped the tip off my pinky.”
He wagged his bandaged finger at her, and her eyes went wide.
“Let me see,” she demanded.
He let her inspect his finger, stirring the potatoes with his other hand. This cooking thing really wasn’t all that hard. Maybe if he wasn’t an Arcanist’s apprentice, he could have been a chef’s.
“It’s a clean cut,” Anaya said. “I’ll put some ointment on it to stop it rotting, but I can’t make it grow back.”
“Then it’ll just be a reminder to me to always chop more carefully.” That was true, anyway, even if he wasn’t thinking of potatoes.
Anaya’s eyes narrowed again. “You’re too happy.”
“First I’m too mopey, now I’m too happy?”
“I don’t like it. You’re up to something.”
“You bet I am. Breakfast!” He flipped a potato into his mouth, then yelped when it burned his tongue.
Anaya rolled her eyes. “I’ll get that ointment.”
She pushed through the beaded curtain to the apothecary’s shop, and Rolan wiped a drop of cold sweat from his forehead. She seemed to have bought the lie about his finger. He was pretty sure he could fool Evaine, but Anaya knew him better.
He would have to be more careful if he went out hunting again. More injuries would lead to tougher questions, and he doubted he could fool Anaya a second time.
If? Who was he fooling? He knew he would go out again, probably that very night.
He hadn’t slept a wink after he got back, despite his exhaustion from the fight.
He was too busy reliving every moment of it in his head, thinking how he could have moved faster, attacked differently.
He’d killed a Cryptic, all on his own, and survived.
How many relics would it take, he wondered, for Luc to realize Rolan could be an asset, not a liability?
Anaya pushed back into the kitchen, her face lined. “Here’s the ointment. Sorry, but you’ll have to apply it yourself. I need to get Evaine.”
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s a line of customers outside the door, all with Cryptic wounds.”
Rolan stared after her as she sprinted up the stairs. He stood quietly as Evaine came hurrying down, Anaya on her heels. They went into the shop, and he heard the door opening and the shuffle of feet and the moan of pained voices as the injured came in, seeking truth salve and bandages.
Rolan’s cheer faded. Things were getting worse. Killing one little Cryptic wouldn’t make a difference. He’d have to be faster, stronger, smarter. He would have to hunt from dusk till dawn.
With a start, he remembered the potatoes.
Too late. They’d already burned.
The Cryptic hissed like a rat, its scales bristling as it circled Rolan.
He had been hunting for a week now, finding the monsters all over Crisanth.
But this was the biggest one he’d faced yet, easily a Rank Two, standing as tall as his shoulders when it rose on its hind legs.
And it had six disgusting tentacles protruding from its snout, like an octopus stuck to its face.
They snaked through the air, each one tipped with a dripping, scorpion-like barb.
As far as Cryptics went, this specimen was particularly hideous.
Rolan struggled to control the panic in his belly.
He hadn’t brought down one this size before, and the tentacles made him nervous.
He was in a distant corner of Crisanth near the river docks, the darkest corner of the city.
Here the lamps were not as well tended due to the fact there were so few houses this far out, and people avoided the area once dusk fell.
He’d known the risk in coming out here, but he’d also heard of several nasty wounds and two deaths in this section, all due to Cryptic attacks.
He was pretty sure he was staring at the culprit.
“Let’s make a deal,” he murmured, keeping eye contact with the creature. This was a bit tricky, considering it had six of them. “You roll over and don’t give me any trouble, and I’ll make this quick and clean.”
He wished Anaya, or anyone at all really, were around to hear how completely cool that line had been.
The Cryptic, unfortunately, did not seem to appreciate Rolan’s wit.
It attacked, bursting forward all at once.
Rolan spun, knives humming as they raked over the Cryptic’s scaled back. It was as hard as armor, sparks flashing where his blades scraped off the monster.
It lashed out with a tentacle, and he rolled clear just in time to avoid having his eye plucked out by its barb.
“Rude!” Rolan said, jumping up and twirling his knives. “Bet you’re one of Finkface’s secrets, huh? Or Hoff’s.”
The creature charged again, tentacles flailing, and Rolan spun away, failing to land even a single hit this time. It was like the Cryptic was toying with him, exposing his weaknesses and laughing when Rolan landed in a heap.
Gritting his teeth, Rolan initiated the next attack, hoping to throw the Cryptic off balance. It didn’t work. The monster moved like liquid, flowing out of reach and retaliating with a tentacle strike. The barb opened a cut on Rolan’s cheek.
He gasped from the red-hot pain of it but had no time to recover. The Cryptic lashed out again.
This time he caught the tentacle on his knife’s blade, slicing through. This did little to slow the beast, and it opened another cut on his thigh.
This was going badly. At this rate he’d bleed out by a hundred cuts before he managed to bring the Cryptic down.
Maybe he was out of his depth.
“Agh!” he cried as he rolled down the riverbank to avoid another tentacle attack. He had to bury one of his knives in the mud to stop himself from tumbling into the fast-flowing water.
To make things worse, it began to rain.
Rolan lay panting in the mud for a moment, catching his breath. The Cryptic waited above, waggling its tentacles in what he could swear was a taunt.
He looked back at the river, at the dark, inky waters. Delicate white flowers sprouted at the water’s edge, petals he recognized.
This was where Anaya came to collect brightleaf, an essential ingredient in several of Evaine’s tinctures.
Rolan ground his teeth together. “No.”
Dragging himself up the bank, Rolan spat out mud and glared at the Cryptic.
“You’ve already killed two people,” he snarled. “I won’t let you hurt anyone else!”
He threw himself at the monster, holding nothing back this time. He had to get past those tentacles if he was going to have any hope of piercing its core.
Twice, thrice it lashed him, each cut drawing blood and another burst of red pain. The venom was stronger than usual, because it was a more mature Cryptic. Still young by Luc’s standards, but more than Rolan had had to handle before. He was getting dizzy, the venom working fast.
He had seconds to end this, or the Cryptic might end him.
Pressing closer, taking two more strikes to his abdomen, Rolan gave a roar and pounced on the Cryptic, pinning it to the ground with his own body. He felt another barb bury itself in his back, and another—
And then his knife found a weak spot in its scales, sliding down into the monster’s center.
With a shudder, the Cryptic’s form went slack. As it turned to smoke, Rolan landed hard on the ground, the wind knocked from his lungs.
Choking for air, sobbing from his bleeding wounds, Rolan wrapped his fingers around his grisly trophy—the glowing blue barb the Cryptic had left behind.
He tried to rise, slipped, and tumbled down the steep bank. The water lapped at his boots, trying to pull him deeper. The mud was too slick, and he could not hold on for long. His strength leaked out of him, his vision blurred. The venom pumped through his veins like death.
He had no choice. If he didn’t do something, he’d slip into the river and drown.
Rolan stabbed the relic with his dagger’s point and reached for the Hollow Path at the same time.
Luc had been right—every time he searched for it, it came faster.
This time it took only two heartbeats to open the channel inside him.
Blue light erupted from the barb and slithered up his knife, melting into the steel.
As he’d done the night Luc had supervised his first Cryptic kill, Rolan pulled the magic into himself, watching the blue vines trace over his hand and up his sleeve.
Strength bloomed in his limbs, his mind brightening with clarity.
He climbed up the muddy bank and to his feet, his senses wide open. He felt powerful. Invincible. Like he could take on five tentacled Cryptics.
Tilting his head back, letting the rain splash onto his sweaty, bloodied face, he roared a laugh to the sky.
“I am Rolan Strider!” he bellowed. “Slayer of Cryptics! Defeater of monsters! Stabber of… uh, things that need stabbing! Yeah!”
He waved a knife over his head, before remembering that waving metal at a sky full of lightning probably wasn’t the brightest move.
Then, all at once, the secret seized his brain.
He fell hard to his knees, then pitched forward to his hands, his vision going black.
The city is restless and full of creepies tonight, oh yes. I hear them skittering in the nooks and crannies. Thieves, murderers, Cryptics. This is my time, the truthforsaken hours before dawn. I better do this quick and quiet, just like the others. All I need is the perfect spot…
Aha! The eastern jail. That’ll do nice. Right on the guards’ own backside, what a laugh!
I take the paper from my pocket, smoothing it down, flicking off crumbs.
It’s a good secret, a nasty one. One of the guards has been stealing gold from his mates, blaming it on prisoners.
This’ll be the end of his career, oh yes.
He’ll be slapped into the same cell he’s been putting my friends in.
I might just stick around for this one, see how it plays out…
Nah. Too risky. The job’s the job, it’s not a show.
I slather paste onto the bricks, then smack the paper onto it, fixing it at eye level. Then I step back and wipe my sticky hands on my coat, chuckling.
This is so good, I almost don’t even care if I get paid to do it.
Heh. Almost.
Sucking breath through his teeth, Rolan pushed himself upright. His vision returned to him in flashes, his head aching. He pressed a hand to his temple and groaned.
But the pain was overshadowed by the revelation of the secret.
Rolan knew those hands. The memory of them smearing paste on the wall, hanging the paper with the secret scrawled across it…
He’d found the person responsible for posting secrets around the city and framing Luc. This man, with his greasy hands and the telltale split on his right thumb, was the one stirring the people into riots and causing a rise in Cryptic numbers.
And Rolan knew who he was.
He could stop him.
But before he could take a single step, the Cryptic’s power left him, and all his pain and exhaustion and poison-induced fever came rushing over him at once.
Rolan plummeted face-first into total darkness.