(TLO) Chapter 97: Another Terrifying Factor (Patreon)

Seth returned to the seminary under the announcement of first light. He returned wearing a new pair of grey joggers, a pair of boots fashioned in leather with a strap across its front, and a new grey cassock. They were gifts from Jabari. if anything, they were proof the man had known the outcome of his training before it began. He strolled up to the seminary gate he was now realizing he had never seen carrying a bag made of leather.

He remembered his conversation with Jabari regarding the bag he carried after he had washed and changed into his new clothes. And while he smelled less after leaving the steam of the pond, he smelled, still.

“So is there more?” he had asked.

Jabari answered with a shake of his head.

“So how do I get back? Will you return me to my brothers?”

“I will guide you half way. Only so you don’t get attacked by enemies you cannot face. Then you will go from there.”

“Alone?” he asked, stupefied. “You do know seminarians don’t know how to walk the mist. It’s why we are always accompanied by a priest.”

“You have a sharp enough mind,” Jabari answered. “You’ll make it somehow. Also, you are walking to the seminary, not your brothers.”

“Why?”

“Because they finished their test a week ago. All of them evolved successfully.”

The glee Seth had from evolving dampened. He had led himself to believe he was, to some extent, something of a genius. Yet, while Jabari had put him through hell to reach Iron, his brothers had done it in faster time under Anthony’s guidance.

Sobered by the news he asked, “What if I get lost on the way?”

“Then something out there will have you, and the last month would’ve been a waste. But I’ll give you a piece of advice. Trust your instincts.”

Seth cocked an unamused brow. “Trust my instincts.”

He repeated the words with a touch of derision. It sounded like something from one of the books Jonathan used to read; something authors would make a character say; the beginning plot to an unnecessary character building event.

“Yes,” Jabari replied, oblivious to his derision. “But only for this walk. You’re too young a soul mage to trust it in making decisions. And if your instincts fail you, as they most likely will, ignore everything.”

“Huh?”

Jabari turned to the wall of rocks behind him and it took Seth a moment to realize they stood in the midst of a mountain range.

“I don’t remember the seminary being close to a mountain,” he observed, eyes catching the blackness of the stones that clung to each other. He looked down and noticed there were no pebbles, no smaller stones broken away from the larger stones. This was an odd mountain.

In front of him, back turned, Jabari raised a casual hand and struck the mountain. It was so casual he looked as if he merely dusted a portion he intended for a seat. Four times he struck it. Four times the mountain lost bits of itself.

When he turned, he held out a bag filled with four lengths of black stone.

Seth wondered where the bag had come from as he took it from him slowly, too slowly.

Jabari seemed blessed with infinite patience as he waited.

Seth looked into the bag, exposed all four lengths of stone, each as long as Timi’s forearm from elbow to the tip of his fingers. Where they had been chipped from the mountain they gleamed a hue of silver as most things that are sharp do.

He touched a finger to one, curious.

“It’s…” he trailed off, struggling to put a word to the sensation. “It’s as if it’s not there.”

“You can see it,” Jabari replied. “You can also touch it. That your brain has refused to function properly right now does not change facts. It is there.”

He reached forward, took the bag by its opening, and zipped it shut. “You will submit this to Dante Faust. If a Reverend wishes to see its contents, tell them your Monsignor instructed you show it to know one but him.”

“And what if they insist?”

“Then you show them. Then you report to Faust every single individual that saw them. It might cost their lives but it was always going to be forfeit.”

Seth frowned at him. “You say the darkest things with a straight face.”

He pulled the bag on, slipped his arms through its handles.

Moments later he was following behind Jabari, watching the man traverse the rocky mountain in the same way he had when he’d been younger. It was the same disturbing way he always did. Then, he had been too scared to point it out. Now, he was not.

“How do you do that?”

Jabari kept walking. “Do what?”

“Walk like that. It’s like your feet aren’t even touching the ground. If I didn’t see them touching it, I wouldn’t believe they were.”

Jabari grunted an unintelligible response. His feet continued to meet the ground beneath it, walked its uneven terrain. But the man’s form did not flicker, his gait did not change. He might as well have been walking on a flat surface. It made Seth shiver.

They walked a while longer, somewhere between a mile and twelve, before Jabari stopped.

“From here you will go alone,” he told him. “You will walk or run or fly—if you can—until you are at the seminary. If at any point you question your instinct, then ignore it. Ignore the taste of the air in the same way. Ignore the direction of the wind. Ignore the mist. Ignore whatever you think you know and just walk. You will get to the seminary.”

Seth chuckled. “Is that an Iron thing?”

“No.” There was no humor in Jabari’s tone. “It is a you thing.” He clasped his hand behind his back and met his eyes. “Now go.”

True to Jabari’s words, Seth’s instincts had guided him for barely more than ten minutes before he lost all faith in it. When he asked his eerily quiet minds, they turned him away with answers that bore no knowledge of how to arrive at the seminary. So he obeyed Jabari and simply walked.

It was four hours before he reached its gates.

He stood before it, amazed. It was a wall of solid steel, four inches thick. It was meters high, piercing above the mist. On its surface was an imprint of a forward facing skull and he could find no line demarcating the gate in two. As for the skull, he had no inkling of an idea what animal or reia beast it resembled.

He still watched the massive master piece of a gate, its design flawed in no way he could discern when a metal groan drew his attention to the side.

He turned and found Reverend Tamori standing at one end of the gate. The Reverend was a tall man, though his height was not intimidating. Not in the way Timi and Fin were growing into. Sometimes Seth felt the man was only tall because he was short.

Tamori was what the seminarians called the Reverend of the gate. Rumor existed that he was among the first set of men to find the place. That he was among the first men to name themselves of the seminary. Reverends by no right than the one bestowed upon themselves by themselves. And for some reason he had taken upon himself the duty of defending the seminary walls, standing by the gates as all guardians do.

Seth gauged the distance between them in a reflex act. There was no threat in the man’s poise, nothing suspect, but Seth had spent the past month gauging the distance between himself and enemies stronger than him. Understanding their reach. How far he should be and not.

The distance between him and Tamori proved large, four men could lay arranged from head to toe one on top of the other and there would still be space. Oddly enough he could not shirk the feeling it was not enough space if the man was to be his enemy.

Tamori pulled him to the immediate with strange words. “I see Iron has done you good.”

Seth, confused, raised his arm to look at himself. He turned his body here and there, studied himself like a man looking for a stain on his clothe. He found nothing out of the ordinary, nothing new. If anything, he was slightly thinner.

“It’s your eyes,” Tamori explained. “They used to be a bland grey. Like a gun not polished. It stood out a lot, made you look… odd. Their still grey, but more silver now. Polished silver.”

He took a step forward and looked down at Seth, into his eyes. “It’s like someone melted silver and poured its liquid in your eyes. You’re lucky,” he added, “There’s no record of a mage’s eye color changing after the first time. You would have been a boring soul mage to look at.”

Seth simply stared, dazed. All the man had done was take a step forward. How had he come to be standing in front of him? His mind could not comprehend the closing of the distance between them. None of the other priests had ever displayed something like this before. Perhaps he has a movement skill.

Tamori turned around. This time, when he walked, Seth watched him return to the end of the gate normally. “Come now. Lessons have resumed without you. And while you were missing and have returned long after your mates, you’re still within the one-month mark.” He gestured Seth forward and he followed after him. “And you are Iron, so no one can say you did not pass the test.”

When they entered the gates, it was to a part of the seminary Seth had never been. They walked down a snaking walk way of blackest bricks—the curse of the seminary’s civilization—flanked on both sides were fields of green plants he could not name, and he noticed there was a touch of mist spilling amongst them from outside.

At the edge of the path was another wall. It was high as a castle’s defense, covered in black as was every building of the seminary. At its top, it was adorned with weaponry of modern technology and soul magic. Turrets larger than a man was tall. He wondered how many calibers of manasteel bullets they contained.

He followed Tamori through an archway dug into the wall, finding it dark inside. A sound of a moving winch filled the archway as they walked. It echoed from within the walls and they proceeded under a raised portcullis.

“Did we build anything here?” he asked absently as they expelled into parts of the seminary he recognized.

Tamori chuckled beside him. “Do the turrets on top of the walls count?”

Seth turned to the man, slightly surprised. Besides Ivan and the Monsignor, the priests rarely showed much in the way of positive emotions. They were either bland or cruel. Other emotions seemed alien to them.

He found the priest looking at him through a dull yellow eye. He was a man with wrinkles at the edge of his eyes and a military cut that made him look slightly over fifty. His skin was tan, and save his left eye of alabaster everyone knew was fake, he was worthy of being called handsome for his age.

“Mind telling me what’s in the bag?”

Seth nodded. It felt slow even to him. “It’s only for the Monsignor. He instructed I show no one when I returned.”

Tamori rubbed his jaw, thoughtful hands massaging stubbles. “Fair enough. Then I best take you to him.”

………………………………………………

In the last month Faust’s necrosis had spread to cover most of his neck. When it had begun spreading to the back, he took to wearing turtle necks. Today he wore one of the many he had acquired as he sat in his office mulling over reports from around the world.

Soul magic was changing. In some places it was changing faster than others. Also, it seemed the Sun King Baron was a Baron no more. Sometime in the last six months he had evolved again. Jedidiah’s evolution had been kept a secret, hidden from the eyes of the world. But he knew the Sun King. The man saw no reason to hide power. The world would know soon enough that Barony was not the peak of soul magic.

Then there was the rise of a new Baron in a territory far away. Not many had seen him but there were rumors surrounding him. They claimed him worthy of the title of the strongest Baron not because of his strength but because of his very being. After all, how was one supposed to face a Baron who reportedly felt no pain. But if he did, then at least he did not answer to it. Apparently, he answered to someone else and his loyalty to them was undying.

Faust knew he would need to learn more of the RuneBound Baron.

He slid a heavy set book over the stack of reports as his senses alerted him to a presence approaching his office. Without worry he prepared to receive them.

One was a Baron, stronger in the authority than he was. It was evident in how faintly he felt the man’s spirit from beneath his veil. Only one stronger than him in the authority could hide his core from him that strongly.

The other was Iron.

There was a gentle knock, then his door opened without his response.

“Delivery for Monsignor Faust,” Tamori announced jovially, guiding the young Jabari into his office. “He just got back.”

With that, he pulled the door shut without ever stepping inside. The man never entered the office. Not even during the reign of the first Monsignor; his predecessor.

Faust looked at Seth, and the boy looked back. Jabari had deigned the seminary’s teachings still important enough to return the boy to them. He did not know if to be proud or terrified.

That the boy was only Iron was a good thing. As unimaginable as it was, a part of him had feared the boy would be Silver if he ever came back. Iron was good. Iron was explainable, controllable.

“How was your time away from us?” he asked the boy.

Seth replied with a frown. “Painful.”

“Such is the path to evolution,” he chuckled. His attention fell on the bag the boy carried and he added: “Is that intended for me?”

Seth nodded, shrugging it off. “I found it while I was gone.”

Faust almost laughed. The boy lied with the straightest face. He was getting very good at it. “And pray tell what it is.”

“I have no idea.” Seth placed the bag on his table and unzipped it. “I was hoping you would know. Maybe find a use for it.”

Faust looked inside and paused. He recognized its contents. He had seen it once before, in a time before his ascension to Monsignor. It resembled part of the mountain to the east. The one his predecessor claimed protected them. The one the seminary stayed away from for its own survival.

If memory served him well, his predecessor had claimed the mountain invulnerable. It was the reason it had neither dust nor pebble. Whatever Jabari was, that he could take pieces from it proved he was too monstrous a soul mage. It made him wonder if there was anyone alive strong enough to face him.

He counted four shards before zipping the bag shut and taking it. The boy let it go without protest. He barely missed the change in the boy’s eye as he slid the bag under his table.

“Your eyes changed.” It was a statement but came out with the inflection of a question.

The boy moved a hand to his face and stopped before he touched his eyes. The entire action had been slow. Not sluggish enough to be alarming. It had just been slow, as if the boy had been thinking of it the entire time it was moving.

“Reverend Tamori said the same thing,” Seth answered. “But I haven’t seen it.”

“That much is understandable. You just made Iron. I’m certain there are other things on your mind, and your brothers will be more than happy to see you. Just know that the change is good. Better.”

He gestured the boy away and returned to his seat. Seth turned with the same thoughtful slowness; slow enough to be a considered a thought out action but fast enough to almost seem at normal speed. He left the office quietly, closing the door behind him.

The eyes were a good change in the boy. The gunmetal grey from earlier had been glaringly odd, freakish even. The silver grey they contained now gave them depth, and beauty. It gave the boy a touch of mystery.

His core, however, was questionable. Either Seth had not seen it or he had accepted it. When he’d sensed it, it was half the size of a normal core. And where a core was a rough circle, reia channels reaching out from the top like roots, his was the shape of a falling drop of water. Its form was equally rough but its reia channels reached out from all over it. Cycling such a core would be interesting to see.

As he returned his attention to the reports before him, he wondered what the future had in store for the young Jabari.

Gently, as if by a force unseen, his mind moved elsewhere.

The child called Oluwatimilehi was another terrifying factor.

According to Anthony, when the boy had woken up to the absence of Seth, he’d thrown quite the tantrum. Restraining him without any harm had been tricky. Though he knew that was simply because Anthony still had a long way to go as a Baron.

Over time he’d heard the boy had grown unnaturally attached to Seth. It seemed the story had not been exaggerated.

Still, for a child to trigger his own evolution to Iron without aid was terrifying. To do it simply because he was told it gave him a better chance of finding Seth was worthy of dread.

He massaged his forehead with thumb and forefinger, the weight of his age growing on him.

He had a boy taken from the mist, being raised by a monster of a soul mage, and another who walked the mist to bring himself to the seminary, capable of dictating his own evolution at will and without guidance.

Those two would be the end of him.