Chapter 12 #2
Eiko realised that Chasin touched a part of his mouth every time Cairn used one of the words for a monster class, except for Rustling. For that word, he briefly touched beneath his chin. Close to his scars.
Had he created this language?
Chasin paused and then made a single, dismissive motion with his finger and his palm.
“Begin,” Cairn said.
A man stepped forward without hesitation, recognising the word without needing his section leader to translate.
Maelon, probably. He had deep-brown skin marked with patches of pale white, each dusted with the faintest freckles.
Eiko had never seen anything quite like it.
His face had the slightly softer lines of someone younger, but none of that softness reached his eyes.
His hair was an unruly brown with cooler grey undertones, and it fell into his stormy grey eyes.
He approached the cauldron, rolled up his sleeves, and paused barely a second before shoving both of his hands into the glowing, bubbling, steaming liquid.
His jaw clenched, the lines of his shoulders tight with tension.
The liquid erupted in brighter light around his wrists, a violent shimmer crawling halfway up his forearms. Heat curled off him in waves, steam rising from his skin—except his skin wasn’t burning. It seemed to be … absorbing the glow.
When he finally pulled his hands free, the molten sheen dissolved into his skin at once, and lines began to form. Red etched across his fingertips, then swept down in branching, assertive lines to his knuckles. A Whistling. The lines were thin and sparse.
He stepped back without ceremony, shaking his arms out, his expression unchanging. If he felt pain, it wasn’t apparent.
He nodded quickly to a man around his own age, who stepped forward before Maelon was even back to Ilara.
Eiko assumed it was Lenny, as he had very similar colouring to Maelon, with copper-brown skin and tightly curled, thick, dark hair.
He moved with a tight, coiled energy, sleeves already shoved up to his elbows.
He plunged his hands into the liquid with reckless speed, making Eiko flinch slightly.
Cairn cut her a look, and she crinkled her nose, acting like it was the hissing sound coming from the cauldron that she was reacting to.
Lenny bared his teeth and held his breath, every muscle in his shoulders locked into trembling tension. Drops of the glowing substance sputtered up the sides, flecking against his uniform, burning tiny little smoking holes in the material. He didn’t pull away.
When he wrenched his hands out at last, the glow sank into his skin just as it had with Maelon.
Red lace appeared—just as thin and sparse as Maelon’s. Another Whistling.
Eiko could hear the faint shift of feet on stone, the murmur of interest threading through the soldiers in the stands.
Vana stepped forward, slight and trembling, stumbling at first. Eiko realised a little too late that Ilara must have pushed her, when the girl glanced back in shock.
She had wild grey eyes, wide and skittish, and short-cropped moonlight hair.
She hesitated at the cauldron, looking back towards Ilara again.
The captain of Half-Moon banner made a firm, downward gesture with her hand, and Vana swallowed, plunging her hands in with a sharp yelp before she clamped her jaw shut, her eyes squeezing tightly closed.
The glow flickered erratically around her fingers, almost uncertain, and she began to rapidly mumble to herself.
“The light, it burns, the sun, it burns, the dark, it burns, the—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Cairn snapped.
She lowered her voice to a whisper, unable to curb the habit completely.
When she withdrew, the light didn’t sink immediately into her skin.
Instead, it pulsed along the surface in delicate threads before finally disappearing inward.
Her lace bloomed across her skin in a pale white spread.
A Murmuring. The thin, curling lines were fragile, but unbroken.
Ilara nodded once in approval, and Vana backed away quickly.
“Are you determined to make yourselves look weak?” Alessandra spoke suddenly, her tone dry and cold.
Kaito’s face twitched with an expression he wiped away so fast, Eiko didn’t even get a chance to read it.
He stepped forward before any of the other Half-Moon recruits could join Maelon, Lenny, and Vana.
He rolled his shoulders back and set his jaw in a way that had Eiko’s heart immediately aching.
It wasn’t something she had seen him do before, but she knew that shrug. She had heard it so many times.
It was his nervous tell, despite how sure and steady he appeared.
He lowered his hands slowly into the liquid.
The glow reacted instantly—maybe a little too instantly. It curled around his arms in spiralling, frantic patterns. His whole body tensed. Eiko could feel the restrained panic radiating from him.
Come on, come on, she whispered internally. We didn’t come all this way just for you to turn your arms into stubs.
Kaito gritted his teeth, and it seemed like his legs shuddered briefly. For a terrifying moment, she thought he might collapse face-first into the cauldron, but then he pulled his hands free, gasping as the light sank inward. White lace wrapped around his fingers. Another Murmuring.
Ren stepped up before Kaito even turned from the cauldron, his expression unreadable. He shoved his hands in with a grimace, like he already knew how bad it was about to feel. The light surged up his arms in violent streaks, and his grimace deepened.
When he withdrew, blood-red lace etched across his skin.
Ky moved next, and his red lace looked startlingly similar to Ren’s, though it lacked the angry red flush Ren still boasted, the skin around his markings so raw it looked like he had just spent hours scrubbing at his arms with wire brushes.
When Rion dipped her hands into the cauldron, the glow softened immediately, its violent bubbling smoothing into a calm, steady radiance.
It was … beautiful.
Of course it was.
Movement on the viewing platform stole Eiko’s attention, and she glanced up to see the king leaning forward over the railing with interest. Eiko’s stomach recoiled.
When Rion pulled her hands out, her lace shimmered pearl white, vivid and even. The lines were still thin and scratchy like the other recruits, but Eiko was certain there were a few extra strokes on Rion’s wrists.
“Are you fucking determined to go last?” Cairn grumbled lowly beside her.
“Yes,” she said. “I honestly couldn’t be more determined if I tried.”
“I guess you’re determined for a beating too.”
Chasin looked their way, forcing Eiko’s throat to close up before she could formulate a response. Those shadowed eyes crawled across her for the briefest, most terrifying moment, before flicking to Cairn, and then back to the cauldron.
Her throat refused to loosen enough for her to draw a full breath after that.
She barely even paid attention to the last two Half-Moon recruits.
All she knew was that the man from Ironglade and the man from Suntide both walked back to their section with hands still attached and white lace wrapped thinly around their fingers.
“Recruit.”
Eiko flinched, but she wasn’t the only one. Everyone flinched at the sudden, scratchy-and-echoey quality of Chasin’s voice.
She jolted forward, seeing that he was staring right at her. Of course he was. He had spoken—called her that word again. He was summoning her for her turn, forced to use his voice because she couldn’t possibly speak his language.
Well … she could, now. But he didn’t need to know that.
Let him keep terrorising every person within hearing distance with that one, scratchy word.
She walked to the cauldron on numb feet.
Hymn? You’re being way too quiet, and it’s freaking me out.
I’m scared, the little monster whispered back. We Silenced wrong. We manifested wrong. What if we do this wrong?
Silencing and manifesting seemed very strenuous and painful for everyone else. I’m fine doing this wrong.
I MIGHT BURN YOUR ARMS OFF!
She flinched instinctively at the scream inside her head, jerking away from the cauldron. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kaito jolt forward a step, his hand out, but Rion quickly pulled him back, whispering something to him.
Eiko sucked in a deep, steadying breath, her cane tracing along the ground as she walked in the direction of the bubbling, hissing mineral, only pausing when her cane clanked against the bottom cauldron.
She told her arms to rise.
They would not.
I don’t know if I can do this, she realised. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Hymn, but the little monster had never Silenced before. He didn’t know how any of this worked.
He had no idea how to protect her, and she had no idea how to demand it.
She was almost certain that if she plunged her hands into that molten mineral, it would be a very big and very painful mistake.
“Quit time-wasting, blind girl,” Cairn grunted.
Yes, that’s what she was doing. Time-wasting. Not having a full-body, interior meltdown.
She swallowed hard, feeling everyone’s eyes on her. The recruits waiting beside the cauldron. The section leaders. The captains. Cairn. The commander. The ring of soldiers in the stands. The king and queen above. The princes.
I’ll protect you, Hymn said again, much more meekly this time. I promise, Eiko.
All right, she thought back, because there really was no other option. Let’s both pretend we know what we’re doing.
She dropped her cane and raised her hands.
They were trembling. So she shoved them into the mineral to hide her fear from everyone else. The heat reached her first, a thick, radiant wall that singed the hairs on her wrists. Her instinct was to jerk back, but she tightened every muscle and pushed forward.
Pain slammed into her.