The green vest was fit to burst, shoddily tied together. Tucking the bundle under one arm, I dragged myself back towards the wall one final time. Flexing my wings further than ever, I bit back a scream. Blood rolled down my chin as I bit my lip and dropped to my knees. Small spasms started at the base of my spine and shot through the small coverts near the tops of my wings.

  What did you do? Raphael sounded strained, and absolutely pissed. I didn’t say a word, riding out the last vestiges of pain. Something about whatever had happened to my wings was affecting Raphael. That was bad. Very bad. I carefully got back up and grabbed my bundle. I could deal with not knowing what people were saying, I couldn’t deal with being dead. I’d be flying whether he lived through it or not. I wasn’t even aware attacks on me would hurt him but it made sense, he was tapped into my nervous system in a way. I dug into the wall and crawled back up. I had to move fast, each bone had a very slight coating of acid, which was rapidly eating through both the bones themselves and the vest they were held in. I had only left around half of the bottle for my second portion of the plan. I lost the feeling in my fingertips as they pressed into the cold mud, the rest of my body burning hot. I was still trembling. Vertigo made me move far too slow. Finally, I reached a point I decided was high enough. Each and every one of my muscles ached, attempting to lock up with every movement.

  Raemos. Raphael said slowly, soothing. Get down.

  An arm shot towards me, but I kicked from the wall before it could reach. Ohgodohgodohgodohgod. I didn’t think about it, I just moved. My wings snapped out. They reached either end of the burrow. My vision was filled with static fuzz. The arms bent from the walls towards me. I dropped the vest, my poor ties coming apart and scattering the acidic bones across the creature’s back. They hit with a series of cracks and pops. I followed suit, diving towards the seam of the creature’s back. It was more like a tilted fall than anything intentional. But god, did it feel good to pull my aching wings in. Rapael was screaming something in my ear so loud I almost didn’t hear the high pitched whir coming from below. The creature was screaming and spasming, its arms trying desperately to take care of all of the small injuries at once. They were rapidly grabbing the bones, and letting go in pain before grabbing them again. It didn’t know what to do. I ripped the dagger from my pocket with shaking hands and wedged it into the separated line between the creature’s now sizzling front and back. It continued picking at its wounds even as I began to saw into the gap. Even as I threw my weight into the gash. Bright blue blood reflected in Raphael’s near-holy golden light as it splattered over my chest, my face, my nose, my mouth. It looked sickly green, smeared across my body and mingling with my own leaking blood. It tasted sweet and acidic. Like pineapple. And in that cacophony of noise and sensation, the chitin began to part before my blade just a little bit too easily. Rusty brown strings of light were sprouting from the point of contact, making my dagger slide through sinew like butter. It let me pierce deeper than my own strength should’ve allowed, the taste of sweet blood ringing in my mouth. The sound of the creature’s screeching became near-overwhelming. My dagger ripped further and further through. It moved as if the meager edge of bone had become a fully sharpened blade. I barely noticed, mindlessly tearing away. I was getting dizzy.

  So dizzy I didn’t notice the arms coming to wrap around me until they had fully encased my torso.

  I reversed my dagger and began ripping at them as hard as I could. They squeezed the breath out from my lungs in an instant, and I remembered what had happened to the femur. I wanted to cry. Thorny protrusions shredded the bandages across my chest, as I struggled the arms slid up and down, ripping fresh and old wounds alike. The delicate bones in my wings seemed to snap from base to tip, all at once. I managed just enough breath to scream like never before. Tears wet my cheeks. I just kept up a heavy rhythm of stabbing against the arms encasing me. They were already acid marked and weakened. I didn’t want to imagine what they would’ve done at full power.

  The acid! Raphael growled. It took a delirious moment to put together what he meant. I stopped using my free arm to claw at the arms, and instead reached into my pocket. With my last vestige of strength, I threw it into the open wound I had made in the soft space between the creature’s chitin. The bottle exploded on impact, leaking deep into its blue-grey guts. The creature keened. The chamber shook around me, arms all thrashing before tightening their hold.

  I meant throw it towards the ones attacking you. Dear Heaven, we are going to die. It gave up on tearing and instead moved to drag me underneath itself. To feed. I caught one last glimpse of pocked armour and exposed roots before I was sliding across the floor like a ragdoll. It pulled me under one of the gaps near the edges of the burrow, my body bruising against the too-small space. The space was incredibly cramped, though it seemed to be standing which lent me a bit of wiggle-room, not that I could use it. Something was wrong here. Three standing legs sat on either side, but these were segmented and the creature had pedipalps near the front. They were fat and claw-tipped, not at all like the thin black feelers that had been tossing me around. Further, the pedipalps sat dormant. It wasn’t pulling me towards its mouth at all. Instead, I was being dragged towards its chest where a large mass of black writhed.

  I wasn’t dealing with the creature at all, I was dealing with its parasite.

  I renewed my efforts, tearing viciously at the arms. They were wearing thin, spilling black ichor into the already-horrid mix of blue and red blood. But it was too late. I was already nearing the mass and no matter how I fought, it would get me. My brain desperately scrambled for a way to fight back. It felt like grabbing an eel through thick gelatin. All I could think about was Kishar. And Casper. I would be abandoning them. Casper would be fine, but Kishar was just a kid. I didn’t care how mature or independent he was. He shouldn’t have to be. He should be at home, he should have a home to return to. I couldn’t get that for him anymore, I couldn’t provide the slight security or comfort I had been before. Would Vakari and Leon help? Would they just pretend the whole thing hadn’t happened? That would be it. I would be dead again and Kishar would be alone. Not only that, but I was dying with the worst person I had ever met embedded in my neck. My body slowly went limp in the arms, I couldn’t quite tell if it was voluntary or not. At least I wouldn’t have to fight anymore. I just hoped it wouldn’t hurt too bad.

  The mass was blueish-black with a small body latched onto the crabs book gills. It was in a pulsing, green mass of blood and pus. It had a circle of gasping, serrated teeth in the center. Opening and closing its maw in anticipation. It pulled me in head first, just like it had through the tree’s hollow. I felt its hot breath and the feted, hot pulse of its massive throat. Saliva dripped onto my cheek. Screwing my eyes shut, I waited for its massive teeth to sink into me. And waited. And waited. And yet. The saliva on my cheek began to burn, my skin sizzling loudly in the newly silent burrow. I reopened my eyes.

  I could see that pinprick of light in the ceiling from where I had been dragged down due to the gaping hole that had melted both the creature and the parasite. Bright blue blood congealed at the edges of the creature, while the parasite's arms curled in on themselves. I used one of the parasite’s twitching limbs to wipe the drops of acid from my face.

  “Holy shit.” I coughed. And then I repeated it a few times just to revel in the experience. I felt emotional whiplash to an extent I had yet to wrap my head around. I was alive. I was out of immediate danger. The creature’s legs were keeping it propped up despite its death, so I didn’t see any threat of being crushed. My head was all light and airy, my body in more pain than it had been in ages.

  “I’m sorry.” I said to it, gently petting my arm, “I don’t know why I keep doing this to you.”

  Can you hear me? Asked Raphael, and I nodded dumbly. You need to sit down, against the wall over there. Come up. One leg after another. I didn’t get why he sounded so un-Raphael like, but I listened anyway. I tried to walk when my legs went numb beneath me, so I dragged myself. It was no different from climbing up the walls, though I had two points of contact instead of four and no risk of falling to my death. The cool mud felt nice under my hot fingers.

  “You know Raphy,” I mumbled lazily, “This is, what, the fifth time I’ve escaped impossible odds? If this keeps up I might develop an ego.” I was tired. My body was running at the same temperature as a V8 engine.

  You’re going into shock, that’s fine. It will help, but you need to stay awake. Do you feel cold?

  “You could probably cook eggs on my stomach.”

  I think the infection you’re developing is fighting the shock for where your blood should go, and it’s winning.

  “Gnarly.”

  You need to stop the blood loss. Use something to staunch the flow.

  I once again removed my cardigan to tie it tight around my sternum, though it didn’t do much. After a bit of poking around, I found the remnants of the green vest and dragged myself over to tie it on as well. Then I sat with my legs up against the wall. The point was to get the blood headed back to my vital organs, but my newly opened chest wound was in the same neighborhood. Laying on my broken wings sucked, but Raphael reminded me that being dead would probably suck a bit more. Time felt like a thick sludge. I spent it picking at the menagerie of different creatures blood across my body, including my own.

  “Wanna play twenty questions?”

  I don’t know how I survived. Just sitting there, waiting for rescue that may-or-may-not-come. I should never have picked a fight with the thing but, well, I was afraid and it was so very large. I especially didn’t know how I had won. Or how I kept winning. In stasis I was nothing but a caveman with a particularly sharp bone and I knew that luck would run out soon. I thought about that bone. About how it had so smoothly slid through the creature’s insides. And those strings of light.

  “Hey Raphael, what does doing magic feel like?” We had gone over this before, but he was always so frustratingly vague about it.

  Can’t you bleed out in silence? Well, at least he was back to normal again.

  “I saw these strings, and I think they made me feel things but like… Extra.” My voice was scratchy, maybe dehydrated. I was sweating like crazy. Raphael didn’t say anything for a dragging moment, before;

  Find one about dragons. I was educating myself on dragons before you ruined my life. He ground out.

  “Que?”

  A chapter for every favor. I’ll tell you about weaving if you read a book about dragons out loud. And don’t you dare do voices or I swear to Heaven I’ll take us both out.

  I was going to hold this against him for the rest of his life, we both knew it. I was partially messing with him when I had asked originally, I never thought he’d actually go for it. But, for now, I made sure not to say anything about how the big bad mad scientist needed his little bedtime stories. It was odd how much pride mattered to someone reduced to such a miniscule life.

  “You got it boss! So, about that magic?”

  Weaving. It’s called weaving or threading. If you keep calling it magic, you’re going to be painting a massive target over your fractured, semi-functional back. Nobody has called it ‘magic’ in, what, a thousand years? Since mana was taken, at least. The crystal embedded in my neck was pulsing as he spoke, casting flashing shadows across the creature’s distended gills. I indolently watched them dance.

  “Right right right right, I feel like we’re missing the big picture here.” I shifted into a slightly less agonizing position, there weren’t many left. It helped. Sort of. Raphael sounded like he had managed to grow teeth and grind them together as he spoke again.

  Weaving feels different for everybody. It’s been so long since I was at your frankly pathetic level that I don’t know how to properly describe it. Like you’re more in tune with your surroundings than ever before. Like the world is biting into your mind and the only way to tame it is to reply. Before you can weave, or in your case thread, you need to contact the aether. You should see strings, like you described. They grow off of everything, from dozens to thousands, it’s through contacting these strings in conjunction with your krasvu that you can thread. For your purposes, krasvu means breath. You ‘breathe’ into the strings. I used to specialize in a very specific type of weaving called Silkworm, before… Before you did this to me. Now all I feel is the battering force of language in its many forms at all times. It’s as if I’m being eaten alive with every comment. And it’s because of you that I will never cast again. His voice went quiet, leaving me in darkness. My addled brain tried to work out what he had said. The last part made no sense really, but to weave I needed to see on whatever wavelength had the strings, and then breathe on them super hard. And magic would happen. I thought back to when my knife cut just a little bit too well. I was certainly feeling every ounce of pain accosting my body. I had wanted nothing more than to kill the creature that had so thoroughly torn me up. Did that count as exerting my will? As contacting the aether? My memory of the feeling was hazy at best. But, the only other thing I had to do at the moment was die. So, I thought about it. I tried to put myself in the shoes of myself only a few minutes before. Pineapple, blood, the stink of mud.

  Thin periwinkle strings popped into the air in front of me. It was as if they had been there the whole time and I was the silly one for not noticing. A bundle of twelve came from the wall at my side. Most were around the width of tooth floss while one, near the bottom, was about as thick as my pinky and far longer. They floated, gently splaying like a jellyfish’s tentacles. Despite the fact that I could see they were letting off light, nothing around them was visible. It was as if they existed only to themselves, and me. There were groups of strings all around the burrow, with most brown or purple. The thickest were attached to the walls of the cave. I noticed on the creature and parasite, hundreds emerged. So many thin, multicolored strings, they looked almost like a cloud. As I watched, they separated off of the corpses and floated in the air independently. Just hovering, without a tether. It was beautiful to observe, but something melancholy began to form in my gut. I chalked it up to the head wound I sustained while being dragged to be eaten.

  I ran my fingers through the nearest bunch of periwinkle strings, with the vague idea they might do something. The watery taste of dirt filled the back of my throat, and I sneezed with the potent scent of salt. It was like an involuntary memory. I immediately pulled my hand back, trying to wipe the feeling of rough roots from beneath my nails. I didn’t want to try out the thicker one, I didn’t think I could handle any more intense sensation on top of the horrible pain-gravy overtaking me.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  A loud crash had me slowly tilting my head up. Through the melted remnants of the creature’s stomach, light flooded the cavern. More than that; a hundred mint-green strings reached through. They stretched and twirled, branching out like some great oak. It was near-blinding. I immediately screwed my eyes shut with a curse. Opening them again without the aether-view on.

  “Lev?” Kishar called, his voice cracking. I tried to shout back, but all that came out was something akin to the sound a chicken makes while it's being butchered. Nowhere near loud enough to reach him. The branches around the room came to life, some reaching for me. I immediately rolled onto my side, dragging myself away. Not this again I thought sourly. Before my brain registered what was actually happening and I pulled myself against the wall. The branches wrapped around me and began to rise. They were slow moving, but I didn’t mind. I’d be in just as much pain at the top as I was now. I ascended through water and algae. Mud clung to my already-soaked skin, the trip up was worse than the trip down. I lingered in each wet layer. By the time I tumbled to the surface, I had turned into more of a brown and blue blood-soaked blob than a man.

  Kishar was sitting in the mud, panting. I could’ve sworn a wisp of smoke escaped his mouth as he rubbed his chest in pain. His bark-like skin was pallid as he looked up at me with too-big maple eyes. Vakari was leaning against a nearby tree with his arms crossed, Leon sitting on a purple quilt eating a pocket-sandwich through her mask. I felt a little touched that the whole group had come. They looked at me. I looked at them, and gave a little wave. That seemed to pull them into action, all speaking at once in a discordant mix. Finally, with Kishar barely catching his breath, Vakari spoke. It seemed to surprise us both.

  “Are you alive?” He rumbled, I nodded. “Throat hurt?” I nodded again. “Bleeding?” Once more. “Broken?” I felt like a bauble head. He nodded. I nodded. He walked over and tugged Leon’s blanket out from under her as she whined. Then he laid it in front of me. I rolled right on. With a mighty heft, I was thrown over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and we were off. The heat of his shoulder was an incredibly uncomfortable addition to my already overheating body. It was stuffy and unpleasant. Nobody seemed to pay mind to my complaints. In between breaths, Kishar was peppering me with questions. Weaving always seemed to leave him exhausted, especially massive actions like tearing a tree from its roots and air lifting me to safety. According to him, Vakari and Leon had walked back into town alone. He was trying to talk his way into the off-limits ‘guild house’ which had a map for information when he saw them mosey through. He found out what had happened and followed them through town, to the outskirts, and into their home until they agreed to show him where to go to check on me. Vakarihad been the one convincing Leon that they should go. Leon didn’t want to disturb the bees and had assumed I was dead. The acid was a hail mary. That was… Unexpected considering their conversation after rescuing me the first time. I mentally rearranged my opinions of them in my head. Thankfully everyone seemed to understand that Kishar was the hero of this scenario, and no other favors were owed. We stopped at a well in the middle of town. I was placed on the ground and unceremoniously doused in a bucket of water. It felt nice. The process repeated a few times until I was deemed clean enough to re-enter the house. Back into the quilt I went, moving forward. This time we definitely attracted stares. But nobody approached. It felt the same as when Leon and I were walking through town. They were trying to pretend we didn’t exist, this time seemed marginally harder due to my condition. We left a trail of water, feathers, and blood behind us.

  The house was shabby and small, I had the sense that they spent most of their money on alchemy equipment if they were earning any at all. I was put right back on the mismatched palette I had started on, in far worse condition all things considered. I was in that same floaty haze I had been with my legs propped up in the burrow. They took off the tatters of clothes, picked fibers and twigs from my wounds, applied salves and splints, and bandaged me once again. I just sat there, blinking dumbly up at them.

  “What is wrong with him? Did he suffer a head injury?” Kishar was sitting ramrod straight at my side, watching with laser sharp eyes.

  “Thank, thank Trio he didn’t! I’ve used a battalion's worth of supplies already!” Leon groused, stitching one of the re-opened claw marks on my chest with some kind of pale pink thread. “It’s, it’s the loss of blood. His head isn’t getting enough of it so he’s going all sorts of loopy. Thankfully I am the best healer as well as the best alchemist, so he will recover soon enough.” She didn’t seem interested in acknowledging how she was planning on leaving me to whatever fate I’d been dragged to. I could tell how badly Kishar wanted to know, but he stayed quiet, letting me rest my voice. Vakari and Leon left shortly after finishing the patch job. It was already night time, but Leon insisted they check on the hive after cutting that tree down. She was worried the bees would get confused. They had a shocking amount of trust in once again leaving a total unknown in their home. I was beginning to think stranger-danger was an exclusively Earth based concept.

  Kishar and I sat in silence, I had propped myself up against the wall with a cup of something blue in my hands. Leon said it would help with clotting. It tasted like vanilla but reminded me of the creature’s blood, so I took very small sips. Kishar was given a cup of something else by Vakari, this drink was brown. It was supposed to help recover ‘krasvu’ which gets used up by weaving.

  “Hey Kish.” I began. He looked up from the small knife and block of wood in his hands. It looked like he was carving some kind of dog. I had no clue where the knife had come from.

  “I think I’m beginning to get the whole weaving thing. You were right! I just needed to, ah, feel my aura.” I lied. He deserved to feel good, He had done a good thing for me and the least I could do was give him a win. He placed his carving materials down and fully turned to face me.

  “Really? It worked? Are you fixed now?” He had so much hope in his little face. ‘Fixed’ was a little uncalled for, though.

  “Yeah, helped me out a ton. I was cutting through this big monster’s back and my dagger just went through like never before.” He asked me to show him, so I took the dagger out and handed it over. He only spoke after a minute of intense staring at both myself and the blade.

  “It looks like a very small Lacewing threading. That means you enhanced the item to do more than it should’ve. Which you probably already knew. It’s rudimentary, barely weaving, but it’s something.” He placed his small hand on my shoulder and looked up with an incredibly serious expression. “I am proud of you, Lev.” It took everything I had not to laugh.

  “Thanks,” I coughed, “I’ll keep working at it. Any tips?” The very first thing he told me about was a spell called ‘projection.’ Apparently it was vitally important for magical babies and nobody else. Thankfully, I matched that description. The only goal was making something happen. It didn't really matter what. But, now that I could see aether, I needed to get used to interacting with it. He told me to stick to younger, smaller strings and to never, under any circumstances, try to touch someone's aura; the strings around a person’s body. I remembered looking at the stretching tangle of Kishar’s as he ripped that tree out of the ground to find me. I couldn’t imagine the explosion of memory that might come with messing with it.

  “I’m sorry for what happened.”

  “It isn’t your fault you got pulled into that tree. It could have happened to anyone! I blame Leon. You should too.” He sniffed, going back to his carving. I had noticed him shooting her dirty looks all afternoon.

  “I mean for almost killing the both of us. If I could’ve helped more on that ship, if I could’ve fought better or planned smarter we never would have drowned. You never would have had to go through that.”

  He sharply tore a particularly large chunk from the wood. “You did your best.” But I could tell he didn’t mean it. I could tell by the way he jabbed and ripped at the block that he didn’t forgive me. I knew it wouldn’t be that easy but it still hurt to see him so upset. So upset and yet he still looked at me like I was someone that mattered.

  “How about this, from now on I’ll tell you before I do anything. I’ll get your seal of approval. If you say something is stupid, or too risky, we won’t do it, period.”

  Kishar pretended to think about it for a moment before nodding slowly. Each movement was carefully restrained. It wouldn’t fix everything, but maybe giving him a voice would help prevent further conflict. Besides, he was the Vintreth expert here; I was just along for the ride. He left a little while after that, swearing he’d keep an eye out for Casper. The guild hall was still refusing to let him in but he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Apparently it was getting very heated. I told him to come to me if they tried anything untoward and sent him on his way. It seemed like everyone was most productive at night.

  The next few hours were spent alternately snoozing and messing around with aether. It became far, far easier now that I had done it twice. Like I was flexing a muscle that had always been there. I felt like a detective collecting clues about the room without ever actually moving. The palette I lay on was made up of old, tattered blankets. The strings were thick, but spindly. They seemed to reflect the frayed threads of the blankets themselves. Through them I could smell the wood they had previously laid on, rotted and wet. I felt something scratchy under my hands, maybe fur? It was something like existing in another half-remembered moment at the same time as the one I was in. I took a deep breath and exhaled, trying to ‘do something.’ It just made my chest hurt. But now that I had made one stride, I figured the rest would quickly come. I laid there, phasing in and out of consciousness as I ran my fingers through the fabric, against the wall, over the cup at my side. My eyes hurt with the gentle glow of light coming from the strings, but it beat doing nothing. A knock came at the door somewhere between tasting pocked, grainy stone and smelling citrus. I ignored it; either someone was looking for Leon or I was dreaming. In both cases I had no business answering. I made sure not to touch any of the potions around Leon’s bed. I couldn’t get up to try, anyway, but the strings around them looked massive and distorted. It seemed magically radioactive to look at and I didn’t want to find out how it’d feel to touch.

  Vakari came in after I decided the second blanket down must’ve belonged to a dog at some point. He took a spot on the larger bed and stared at the smaller in silence. For around two hours. He sat completely still and stared. I figured I wouldn’t push my luck as a guest and ask why. Instead I took deep breaths and kept at it. It was, quite possibly, the most soothing experience I’d had in ages. I needed to get ripped up by monsters more often. Everything hurt, and laying on my stomach was becoming unpleasant. But the deep breathing and minimal movement were doing wonders for me. I admittedly ended up sleeping more than trying to weave. I wondered if that drink was spiked. Leon came in a little while later. Apparently, the bees were alright and the honey was secured. She ran her fingers over the sides of each window, locked the door and jammed a chair under the knob, checked under every layer of her blankets, and patted me down, before finally throwing herself atop the pile of books consuming her bed. I was thankful for the new pants I was given beforehand. I felt like a toddler sleeping in his parent’s room so they didn’t have to spend money on heating through the winter. Except the parents were strangers who nearly got me killed.

  “Are you an assassin?” Leon mumbled a scant few minutes later. It took me a moment to recognize that she was addressing me.

  “No. If I were an assassin I’d be pretty bad at it. Why’re you asking?” I stared at an ant moving across the wall. It had a few too many legs and eyes compared to an Earth ant but it was close enough.

  “‘Cause, ‘cause of all the assassins after me.” She replied tiredly.

  “What?”

  I found sleep impossible throughout the rest of the night. Kishar didn’t come back in. I was worried, but I knew I couldn’t do anything to help in this state. I quieted my mind with the thought that he had just decided to camp out in front of the guild house overnight. He was hardheaded like that. The next morning, I woke to the sound of the pair getting ready to meet the day. They were going to check on the bees of course, and I had no idea what else but a traveling bard was in town. That seemed to be a big deal by the way they were chattering about it, and by what Leon had said before. I had Leon toss me a book from her bed about ‘Aether-Melded’ creatures, which was where I might find information about dragons at. I figured that would be good enough for Raphael. They made it clear in no uncertain terms that I had to sit there and do nothing because their kindness would only extend so far and if I ripped myself apart again they wouldn’t put me back together. Once they had left, I dragged myself out of bed and propped against the back wall facing the door in the least painful position possible. No assassins would be catching me prone and unaware. Just prone. Then I told Raphael that I’d start reading for him, but no reply came. Being bedbound was starting to suck.

  It turns out that I can’t actually read without sounding the words out regardless. The letters melded together on the paper, a concoction of sigils and harsh lines of ink I couldn’t begin to understand. Yet, as I opened my mouth, they formed into perfect English. I knew it was due to Raphael’s ability to translate, but the specifics were lost on me. I didn’t even know what the sounds the symbols made were supposed to be, and yet there it was. Most of the chapter flew over my head. Something about how the massive structure of dragon’s bodies couldn’t be supported by aether after the death of ‘mana’, so despite their incredible power their bodies were sort of falling apart. Like wax sculptures under sunlight. Apparently ‘creatures’ weren’t creatures, they were capital C, Creatures. When aether strings entirely consumed an animal and they lost the more meaty aspects of themselves. The aether would form a fake skin around them, mimicking their original form. I checked the glossary at the end. Monsters (capital M) were animals half-way through the transformation, and Animals (capital A) were fully flesh and blood like sentient people. It was all evolution stuff from hundreds of years ago that had yet to finish compensating for itself. The larger a Creature was, the harder time aether had compensating for its original form. A ton of similar aether would naturally coalesce around these types of creatures, which is how they’d develop specific attributes like ‘fire’ type or ‘wind.’ That was also an exception to the rule, as aether didn’t usually travel on its own. I could see why Raphael was so interested in them, they were the messed-up zombie children of the magic system. Just like him. Still, learning about the world through exceptions to its rules didn’t seem like the most useful way to spend my time. I now knew of two ways aether would affect the real word. Arynthrite, what Raphael was, when aether of the same kind was all together for so long that it knotted and became too dense for the aether-plane so it fell into ours, and Creatures. So apparently aether existed in another plane of existence and when I was flexing my aether muscle I was just glancing into and interacting with it. It also seemed that something called ‘mana’ used to exist, but doesn’t anymore. I wasn’t so much interested in the history lesson, though. I wanted to know more about aether strings themselves and what I could do to them.

  I was around halfway through something about the specific mechanics of how dragons attracted aether when a knock came at the door. I ignored it, and kept reading just like I had last time. The knock came again around two minutes later. A shocking amount of time to just stand at someone’s door, waiting. I kept reading. Again at the five minute mark. And once more at ten. By thirty I had entirely zoned out the knocking but by an hour it had re-zoned-in and I was damn sick of it. I tried reading louder, but that’d just make the knocking louder. We were at a standstill.

  “They’re not home!” I called out roughly.

  “Ah, well, could you take a message?” The voice sounded somewhat familiar, but not in a way I could place with any certainty. That was all blown out of the water by the fact that it sounded British. Like an honest-to-god proper-Oxford-received-pronunciation British accent. I was delighted to say the least.

  “Sorry, can’t. I’m kind of a mooch around here, but if you give me a name I’ll let them know you stopped by.”

  “‘Mooch’?” He paused, before recovering. “Well, no matter. I am looking for a white haired man supposedly seen around here.” It was my turn to pause, looking down. Well now I just had to know.

  “...I can take a message.” He had kind of given one anyway. “Tell me more.”

  “I can’t seem to find my vest, and a gentleman down at the dining hall where I had left it mentioned seeing a man meeting that description nearby. He also thinks this individual has a connection to some kind of snake, but I’m sure that’s just hearsay. It would be nice to confirm it with the man himself, however” I could practically hear the smile in his voice. I had very clearly been found out. He totally knew I was the guy he was looking for. I looked over to the tatters of my clothes from the night before. At the shredded green vest I’d used to staunch the bleeding. It was covered in viscera of a sort I couldn’t even begin to identify.

  “...I’ll let them know next time I see them.” I wondered if fantasy dry cleaning existed. And fantasy sewing machines. I didn’t think I was getting out of this. Why had I grabbed it in the first place? Why did I feel so compelled to do it? I knew I had a bit of a loot-hoarding problem but I didn’t just go around stealing. At the time, it was just the right thing to do in my head. There was a hazy, half memory hiding in there. It felt like touching aether. Someone had said something about it, someone had wanted me to find it and I was so completely driven to please.

  “Could I come in?” He asked. I was very rapidly seized by the urge to talk to him. Like I had no choice but to say;

  “Of course man.”