NOVEL NEXT Chapter 109: Split her open and feast on her blood
"Ganvar struggles with mass disturbance spells." Rimmar said as he morphed into the shadows, blending himself into the corner of the room.
Tommaso and Ilya's quarters were technically rented Synod property, but stepping through the threshold felt like walking into a hidden world stitched together from heat and, of course, frost. The layout was standard issue: a single sitting room with a kitchenette and a bedroom tucked behind a sliding panel. But that was where the conformity ended.
A wrought-iron chandelier hung askew from the ceiling, its candles replaced by rune-lit bottles that glowed orange and blue. Playing cards scattered across every available surface: tables, windowsills, a half-melted basin, even tucked between books on the single overloaded shelf. Empty tumblers shared space with vials of frostvine bitters and ember-aged whiskey, one of which was still smoking. A bearskin rug, warded against flame, sprawled beneath a coffee table hewn from reclaimed spellstone, its surface still whispering with the faint crackle of lingering heat and frost. The couch looked like it had once been elegant velvet, now faded and singed at the edges, a patchy throw blanket of stitched-together bar towels and silky shawls draped over the back.
The room was an organized mess.
"They actually live together," Fabrisse murmured. He hadn't expected that. It wasn't unheard of among the citizens of the Kingdom of Raslan, but it wasn't common either. Most pairs didn't last long enough to risk that level of permanence. The few who did were either reckless or deeply committed. Possibly both.
Ilya had collapsed face-first onto the bed in full uniform, boots still on, one arm dangling off the edge like she'd simply short-circuited. Her silver-blonde braid was slightly unraveling, and the corner of her coat had caught on the pillow, but she didn't seem to care. Or notice. Or possibly even exist on the same plane anymore. But Tommaso had never once commented on how odd she was.
I don't think she's drunk, Fabrisse thought to himself, but she acts like she's drunk all the time.
Tommaso sat backwards on a chair, arms slung over the backrest, legs kicked out to the side, like even sitting was something he refused to do the normal way. A burnt-orange scarf hung from one wrist. "What kind of mass disturbance?" He asked.
Rimmar, still partially in his shadowed form, didn't answer right away. It took another second for him to speak up, "She doesn't like erratic movement, say, stuff flying around in unpredictable arcs. Anything that doesn't follow a clean trajectory can scramble her. She deliberately cast safe during those portions of practical tests, so you wouldn't know she's bad at it if you vet her past performances."
Tommaso leaned back slightly, tilting the chair on two legs. The balance was ridiculous. He didn't seem concerned. "I think I have a few ideas."
Fabrisse felt particularly concerned about this one detail, but Tommaso took the words out of his mouth before he decided to speak, "Though. Why come to us? Why are you offering to help?"
"I have reasons to believe she's the one targeting you, or at least contributing to opening the shadowfolds," Rimmar spoke without pause. "All she ever did was take away from the weak. I won't allow that."
"What did she do?" Fabrisse asked.
"She tutors. She offers guidance to first-years, apprentices, even late bloomers, and volunteers to 'help them realize their potential.' You must've seen her ridiculously low rate. But have you seen her list of past students?"
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"No . . ."
"They're ones that can cast rare element or hybrid spells since their formation years. Blood; flesh; silk; energy, to name a few. The ones with odd resonances—ones the Synod hasn't fully mapped or understands poorly."
Tommaso's chair dropped flat to the ground with a soft thud.
Rimmar went on. "They trust her. She's patient at first. Kind, even. And then, during those one-on-one sessions, she starts to draw. Not just spells; she siphons the resonance itself. Not all at once. Just enough that the student begins to feel off. Sluggish. Scattered. And most never realize it's not just exhaustion or burnout. It's her, rewiring them piece by piece for someone else's research."
"She alters them?" Fabrisse asked in a low voice.
"She hollows them," Rimmar said. "The gifts they're born with start to fade. Sometimes, she changes them forever." He extended a hand from the darkness. "Look at me."
The shape of Rimmar's hand resolved, barely catching the room's strange mix of light. The hand looked burned out of existence, its outline blurred and wavering like a mirage. Fabrisse could see his withered skin, but no visible veins or knuckles—just a silhouette of fingers made from pure black, not like ink or shadow, but a void that denied all light. A nothingness carved into space.
"I didn't ask for darkness," Rimmar said. "My innate affinity was Metal. Don't be surprised if she can shoot steel. In fact, be careful of any variation of 'Pierce of the Iron Saint'. That used to be my spell."
Fabrisse swallowed.
"She doesn't even bother to hide it afterward," Rimmar added. "Once they're no longer useful, her mask slips. There's contempt there, like they were stupid for trusting her. She's that kind of person."
"Why has nobody ever reported her?" Tommaso asked.
"Most of them got removed from the Synod after the extraction was complete, before they could do anything. Whoever is behind her is very powerful."
"Sounds like she deserves to be burned at the stake," Tommaso said as he glanced over at Fabrisse, who was just staring at Rimmar.
The warmth of the room suddenly became so distant and thin. The words were still echoing, but it was Rimmar's biting tone that struck him more.
Rimmar leaned out of the corner's shadows, just enough for the light to catch the shade of his face. For a heartbeat he didn't look like a student their age at all. The hollows under his eyes carved years into his face, and the gaunt ridges of his cheekbones split the crawling light as though it were cleaved in two. His mouth parted, his expression void of anything except a hunger Fabrisse had never seen in a human face. "I couldn't split her open and feast on her blood. But one of you will."
Fabrisse shook.
He wanted to disbelieve; wanted to think that Rimmar was the one lying all along. But his mind wandered to the memory of Rolen's disgusted face as he resisted the urge to shatter the small quartz crystal Ganvar had given him. The one that had contained active, invasive tracking.
His throat tasted like copper. He raised a hand to his mouth to stop the wave of nausea that crept up his chest like bile. How could someone do that? How could a person wear compassion like a cloak, only to peel it back once they'd harvested what they wanted?
What if it had been me?
What if someone had taken his Stone affinity? The stillness he felt holding a piece of polished Stupenstone, the joy in identifying a rare shard of sun-crystal buried in the rubble of a riverbank, the thrill of coaxing out a structure's memory with a tap of his fingers.
Then what would be, of me?
Maybe Rimmar had been an entirely different person before all this.
Tommaso's voice slapped Fabrisse back to reality, "Rimmar did have an affinity to Metal during his foundation years, Fabri. It's confirmed in the documentation." Then he tapped on the side of the table with his knuckle. "Damn."
Rimmar had retracted his pitch black hand, and it was Fabrisse's turn to stare at his own. He activated Stonesway, and three of his Stupenstones floated out of his satchel and swung around in an orbit.
There was no room for doubt. He would take Ganvar down. And he would need strength to do that.