Acryl

  His heart beat like raindrops. Acryl couldn’t help but feel the fear in him, the same kind of fear that he felt when he was on stage once, the time when he was chosen as the soloist for the choir’s concert.

  The one in yellow slowly walked away as they were diluted in the crowd. Acryl didn’t try to stop them. The yellow slowly blended into the people as if a drop of tint turned almost unnoticeable in a great volume of water. He calmed his breathing down as he looked toward Neon. She was pale, yet she looked calmer and more confident than Acryl. Somehow her smile still hung on her face as she pulled Acryl’s arm.

  “…I think we’ll call it a day here,” Neon whispered, looking at Acryl, then it dawned on him. She wasn’t looking at him, but the sky behind him, and the thing towering over it. The mushroom of runes and steel that watches over all. Acryl looked down to find runes shining, not radiating from him, but the source that he felt before. That caster intensified their Realm-art. It seemed that the tower was much duller than his sense of Realm-art. The city caught something…and his gut feeling told him that what the city’s eye noticed was no stranger to him.

  “Neon…did you feel it?” he asked, trying to feel the ebb and flow as Neon let him go, though he didn’t have to concentrate for it. It was like an unpleasant background noise. Neon frowned as she glared in the direction of the source. They both stood there, unmoved, while waiting.

  Waiting for that first thunder, halting their steps for the grand entrance.

  The runes flowed through the street, slithering up the stairs, running into the back garden of the church.

  It definitely isn’t a bright idea to check it out

  Then it came.

  A wave of casting flooded out as the runes flared. It rushed in while the light turned blinding.

  “We should get going,” Neon said, her face worried as she bit her lip.

  But as Acryl wanted to answer, he noticed a familiar pattern in the casting. Sound, unmoved, disciplined. He found the analogy of water bodies for casting was rather fitting, but for this caster, it felt like a stream of water coming from a syringe.

  “…I think it won’t be anything dangerous,” Acryl said.

  “Alright? I guess this place isn’t too dangerous?” Neon said while she held her necklace.

  The wave swung, as if a bell blown by the wind. No sound came, only his heartbeat echoed in his chest chamber.

  Acryl figeted with his eraser in his pocket while he glared at Neon. She didn’t seem as worried as he was; perhaps it was due to his Realm-hypersensitivity that the wave felt so noticeable. His heart beat unbelievably fast while his veins’ pressure rose uncontrollably.

  Out of nowhere, his blood churred. Acryl could feel it moving in strange directions; it was not natural how it felt, and he almost fell on Neon from the strange sensation. His vision went black for a second as his thoughts, including the unspeakable fear, were gone for a second, at least, it felt like that.

  After seeing the light of day again, he felt like his body functioned like usual. Barely standing with Neon’s help, he saw a man in front of him. A Siyuenese man who wore white. His eyes were of strange colors- part blue, part yellow.

  “Was that…you?” Acryl asked, barely making a sound.

  “You don’t seem surprised,” the man said. His hood flapped in the wind as his hair bounced within it. It felt like seeing an experiment, watching the solution turn its colors when the point of no return was reached.

  “…Parsley,” Acryls muttered. The man before him overlapped with the inspector on the aircraft.

  “Thyme,” Parsley said firmly.

  “Your codename means bravery…you’ve lived up to that name. Thyme…thyme…rhymes with time,” Parsley said, his voice soothing and warm.

  “And how much time do you think you have left?”

  “Not much,” Acryl answered. His mind was racing to connect Parsley with what had happened lately. The Siyuenese man Kaspar mentioned, the talismans that appeared in Realm-art related vendors, and that he was the one who told him of the Crowns. As Fosfor said, Canvas used to be a part of the Brotherhood; therefore, it would be no surprise that they might have met outside the flower field. Canvas said he was chasing the Crowns…considering the competence Acryl could see on Parsley, it pointed to the possibility that Canvas and Parsley were in some kind of cooperation.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “Don’t you know the Tower has noticed you?” Neon interrupted.

  “It poses no concern to me. Against the smite of the Serpent, the mushroom is nothing.”

  Parsley stopped for a second and reached for his pouch. He pulled a yellow talisman out of it and folded it swiftly. It looked sturdy. Parsley handed it to Acryl.

  “For inhibiting Realm-art intensitivity,” Parsley said. Acryl took the talisman and put it into his bag, between the watercolor set and the clips. He was ready to ask him about Canvas.

  “…What is your relationship with Canvas?” Acryl asked. But another question rose. It was just now that he realized the similarity between him and Suiming. The star motifs on their clothes, the conflicting youthful appearance, and the indescribable feeling of two old and solitary stones.

  “Parsley…how long have you known Forget-me-not?” Acryl let his words slip out of his mouth as he contemplated whether the question was right.

  Parsley hesitated for a while. His eyes swayed as he took off his hood. The black, long hair tied into a tail flowed chaotically in the wind, catching his nose and covering his eyes. Yet through the strands of hair, Acryl could see a kind of strange sorrow and regret. Like a moon wishing to be full again, a shadow that wished to have the form and details of the real thing. Something was broken and turned into sparks that fueled the light in those eyes.

  He was longing for something, chasing clouds while pretending they were gods.

  “We have the same destination, but our journeys differ,” Parsley cried.

  “…I’m sorry,” Acryl said.

  “There is no need. For your question about your father…we are merely sharing the same road, after this, we return to our own journeys.”

  Their words burned into silence again. From a distance, the Tower stood there in the same quiet. The grey sky shared the silence with them while droplets of rain disrupted them. One by one, the cut-stone ground’s color changed, patch by patch, until the rain turned into a downpour. Without a word, Acryl and Neon departed from the church and walked back to the hotel where they stayed.

  …

  Kodekse

  Realm-art: To Compose Thoughts into Songs

  The thick codex and her notes were scattered all over her desk. Piles and piles of documents, coffee stains, and the harp strings she bought but hadn’t been able to string on her harp. She had become busy again, and her bad habits of staying up late and caffeine dependence paid her a visit, staying in her apartment and not letting her live in peace.

  As she went through the evidence and records, she applied access to. Her Realm-art, which weaved golden strings of events in thoughts into an organized overview of Laima’s case, flowed through the room. Some of the strings fell without any tension, some tight and strong like the steel strings of instruments. Casting in public spaces was never allowed, but casting in private properties and workplaces was permitted, while rituals were not allowed without permits, as their medium and materials could be damaging in the long term.

  She went through the records of the Tower to find if Laima had been casting in public space. Most of the records did not match Laima’s location and time of presence. This did make Kodekse feel her work was easier than it seemed. But she had to go over the more obvious problem- Laima’s identity issue. There was no doubt that she was Treisaulian; she checked multiple etymology sources and literature that the language she spoke and her name were of Treisaulian origin. Despite that, a larger question needed to be answered: how did she cross the border? Was the Belt of Fatherland a strong wall that prevented even a fly from entering or exiting? Or was it a gate closed off to the world with exceptions to be made?

  Kodekse liked her mind to wander, which was not something she fancied doing when she needed to focus. As she thought of the questions about Laima, her mind raised its own question:

  What was powering the Tower?

  Usually, runes contain their own energy for functioning; even the airships didn’t need an external source. But the Tower? The device that functioned day and night, through rain and snow, through sunrise and sunset, spring and autumn, could continue its surveillance over the city, continue its broadcasting of radio without an error for longer than she lived, but didn’t have a strong enough source that Kodekse couldn’t feel when she was near it?

  She was diagnosed with a rare and extreme Realm-hypersensitivty, which caused her to feel even the tiniest flux of Realm-art and arcane; therefore, it did not make sense that she could not feel another source of power within the runes of the Tower and its rhysoids. If there were a specific reason for it that wasn’t harmful to any party or wasn’t related to some beings better left unknown, it would be common knowledge, but nobody spoke of it.

  Kodekse felt lost, not from the side-effect of her Realm-art that made her lose orientation skills for a brief moment, but genuinely lost. Like she was taking an exam she did not prepare for.

  “Peculiar…” she muttered. Kodekse had no clue what could have been powering the Tower. She felt the stinging cold crawling up her spine as she realized she was in dangerous territory and better leave her curiosity only a product of her mind’s mindless wander. But Kodekse couldn’t.

  She lived for almost three decades under its watch, listening to its songs, feeling safe that no outbreak of abnormalities could happen in the city of Havel, but now it was not comforting. She was disturbed by the nature of the Tower. What was it if not another Burnt Codex of Siyue? Only this was not made by an Existence’s spite, but the greed over control of her fellow mankind. She knew what the Tower could see, which was what allowed the law enforcement to act speedily.

  Visiting the inside of the Tower was impossible; a permit required a doctorate’s degree in arcane engineering, and the application process could go on for months, if not a year.

  In horror, she dismissed her Realm-art. Almost falling over her chair and breaking the harp near her desk, she clumsily navigated her room and found the radio, not playing anything, just there, idly open. I shouldn’t do that, she thought. Feeling its metallic shape and seeing the runes connected to it, she turned it off.

  Even that didn’t feel enough, she grabbed her quilt from her messy bed and covered it over the radio.

  Kodekse knew it was unreasonable, but it felt a bit safer after doing that.

  Nameless Kodekse thought she might be able to help me.