The Ascendant's Path

Caelan stood frozen by his door, bracing himself for the next hour. He expected lots of forced smiles and unspoken expectations. He would remain stuck by the exit of his room, hand hovering over doorknob. Each time, only the thought of Gramps coming over had him go downstairs.

A family tradition remounting generations, once a week they all ate together. When he got into the kitchen, the mother placed a set of plates on his arms. "Put these on the table, would you?"

The boy ignored the way his throat burned, instead doing as requested. The image of the smashed porcelain on the ground flashed his mind when seeing Tara on her phone.

She sat at the table, typing away at it without a care in the world.

Just place everything at the table. Don't give them any more reasons.

He had finished his task when someone rang the doorbell. He leapt at the chance, receiving the bear-like man at the entrance with a hug. "Hey, Gramps!"

He released a laugh that could shake the earth itself. "Good to see you, lad. Congrats on the archery competition." Gramps passed along a package wrapped in rough paper. "Couldn't get anything fancy, but think you gonna like it."

After open, the present revealed itself as a book on electrical systems. The smell once the plastic was out always filled the young man with a warmth to the chest. He thanked the large man with another hug.

Once all the usual greetings and formalities ended, the family sat at the table for the meal. Once the prayers also finished, Caelan felt water pilling up in his mouth by the sight of the potatoes.

His mother cleared her throat, getting everyone's attention.

"Before we eat, I believe there's cause for celebration. As you know, this week one of us managed to achieve something extraordinary."

Caelan's heart raced. Part of him scolded himself for expectations he knew they would crush.

But still, perhaps this time…

"This week, Tara's essay on the Retaking of Paris got the highest marks of her entire year. She'll be presenting it to the whole school next Wednesday!" The woman held the pre-teen's hand with gentleness. "We are so proud of you!"

Of course. Like his ribs had tightened around his lungs, Caelan berated himself. Of course this happens.

His aunts, from the mother's side, began praising the girl, who threw a beaming smile at them all. All the boy wanted to do was to sink into the floor and disappear.

A burp had every person at the table look at the place Gramps sat. Hands over his belly, he stared down the venom present on the mother's gaze. "Sorry, old age you know? Can't keep them in for long." The boy had to cover his face to not let anyone see the crocked smile he had. "Also, shouldn't we praise our boy here?"

Caelan's father, a man of very few words, shifted his weight at the chair. "What do you mean, father?"

Gramps gave him a look that diminished him in size. "Caelan won a very important competition. He qualified for the municipal archery championship. I think that warrants more praise than a few fancy words."

A heavy silent hung to the table. With a twitch to her smile, the mother took a quick glance at her son. "Well, it's just second place, so we didn't want to make a fuzz about it."

Everyone saw how the father opened his mouth, only to back down with a look from his wife. A vein popped on the old man's forehead. "Funny how you of all people think being second place is not amazing." Gramps sent another freezing look at his child. "Remind me again how your marriage began?"

Caelan shut off all sound. People yelled, Tara cried, yet he felt alone. All he focused was the glass in his hand, trembling from all the pent-up emotions. His grip of it strengthened more and more, as he tried not to yell with everyone else.

Before the whole thing came apart in his hand.

"That's my vintage set!" His mother yelled, blood rushing to her face.

The way the fist slammed on the table had it lift from the ground. Everyone looked at the towering bearded man, nostrils flared like a bull. He looked at Caelan, jaw tightened. When he spoke next, it felt like a winter lake, so serene and calm. "Caelan, you hurt?"

"N-No… it didn't cut my hand."

Gramps' eyes never left the mother. "Good. Go grab your things, we are leaving."

The woman went pale. "Excuse me?"

"I won't let my grandson spent a second more here." He looked at Tara, who hid behind her mom. "That one is rotten already. No use in wasting my time."

After that night, it would take years before Caelan saw his parents again. On the day he broke his mother's nose.

-----

"So…" Leopold watched over Caelan's shoulder as he projected ideas for his design. "What are you doing there?"

With Falkner in the workshop, he couldn't turn to him. If he did, the ghost would see the shine to his eyes as he did the calculations. "Well, I'm making me a weapon that doesn't rely on essence. At least in its basic form."

Leopold did a few "jumps" in mid-air. "Is that one of those gun thingies you talked about?"

"No, those are a bit too dangerous to let out into the world." He could feel the way the ghost deflated. "Instead, I'm making a bow that requires no physical strength."

"Really? You know how to make that?" Leopold got closer to the drawing board, absorbing every detail.

"Not exactly. But I know about tensile strength, elastic energy and all the physics behind it." He chuckled, the sketch finalized. "Now it's the good and old trial and error till I make it."

A few hours later, Caelan had his face against the desk, sighing. Leopold looked like he wanted to say one of his lines, but held back. "You know, I wish I had the game's crafting system here."

"Yeah, guess pressing a couple buttons to get shit done is easier."

With a groan, Caelan went back to finish the form. It felt like requisitioning gear back in the army. With layers of pointless approvals, half of them redundant. Becoming a Hunter let him bypass the system to get what he wanted. In fact, that had been one of the reasons he joined. Shame that won't fly here.

"I started to hate living in a floating rock. The kind you can't mine or you risk it falling to the ground."

Leopold smirked as he typed the requisition. "Welcome to being at war against an invincible enemy."

Caelan's mind went elsewhere. Another war. Another fight he couldn't win. Piles of bodies of those he failed to save.

He shook it off. He had a crossbow to build.

Another problem came in the non-existence of "plastic". Turns out all the objects he thought made of it hadn't come from petrol. Instead, an organic matter modified by alchemy served as its base. A subject the games didn't touch much, as the Academy didn't have an Alchemical department anymore.

"You curious about the art?" Falkner tried to clean the sweat from his brow. Only to have it smudged by ink instead. "Let me guess, the headache of securing amberite?"

Caelan sighed, body leaned against the three-armed construct. "That obvious? I don't get how amberite is harder to find than iron—one's in a lab, the other's in a Rot-infested hellscape."

Falkner began to explain how the alchemical arts became regulated to the extreme. Twenty years prior, many of the noble houses claimed to have found the Valiant. Which in turn, had chosen the heir of House Vortigane as the supposed Ascendant.

Having the alchemical guilds as support almost gave them the victory. So, once they saw defeat, harsh restrictions on the practice came in place. To ensure they wouldn't be able to go against the Royal Family again.

"How dangerous is alchemy?" Caelan watched as the man froze for a second.

Falkner wiped ink-stained hands across his painting. Smears of dark streaks destroying a once-pristine skyline. "It used to be a city," he muttered. "Before alchemy turned it into dust."

Caelan frowned, a shiver crawling down his spine. "That bad?"

"On the wrong hands, yes." He paused, eyes glued to the now ruined painting. "They cannot outright forbid it. Too vital." He put down his brushes, shoulders sagged. "But now each and every substance they produce are highly controlled."

"And if I wanted to learn how to do it myself…"

The professor's hand twitched. "I don't recommend it. You do it legally, you get your every move watched. You don't, exiled to the Wastes." Falkner tapped his fingers against the desk, a rhythm too steady for comfort. "My predecessor, a genius in the field, suffered the same fate. Officially, he's dead." A beat. "If you believe in official stories."

Caelan frowned. His gut told him to ask, but he ignored the itch. "I don't plan on ending up in the Wastes, Professor."

"Good." Falkner smiled, but the warmth didn't reach his eyes.

------

Sat on a bench under the setting sun, Caelan reflected on the delays he faced. It would take days before all the materials arrived. And if he used them all without results, he would need to go through all that again.

A fly hit him to the side of his head, which got ignored. He waved his hand at it, expecting it go to away.

"Thank God I have both Vaedra and Veylor on my side." He waited for a sarcastic quip back, finding only silence. "Leopold?"

The ghost couldn't be found anywhere. Caelan had noticed he could choose to "turn off" whenever he wanted. He said it felt like sleep, only he could hear everything around them. The displaced wondered why he decided to do it then.

The same fly hit him on the opposite side. Now a rush of blood went to his head as he moved his arm to send it away. Instead, he noticed how it seemed to move in a pattern.

Fascinated by the strange phenomenon, he watched as it formed letters in the air. "Either I'm going insane at last, or this is another strange thing about this world."

Just as he began deciding what to do, the fly fell down to the ground, stiff as a statue. The fly convulsed mid-air, like something was yanking at invisible strings. Then it dropped. A second later, Leopold clawed his way up from the ground like a half-formed shadow. Caelan jerked back, fingers reaching for a weapon he didn't have. His heart slammed hard inside his chest. It took him a moment to realize—he hadn't seen Leopold do that before. "Holy fuck, it worked!" Leopold grinned, his voice warping at the edges. Felt like static, untill it snapped back to normal.

"Wait, you were the fly?" The man thought he must have looked ridiculous, staring dumb founded at nothing.

"Yes!" The spirit waved his arms with wild abandon. "I kept thinking that, being a ghost, I might have cool powers. I mean, I can go through physical shit and all, so why not possess people?"

Caelan crossed his arms, eyebrow raise. "You can do it with people?"

"Not… yet. But this is huge! You think I can do rats next? Oh, or dogs—wait, what if I could make a bear fight for us? You could even ride it so we can terrify our enemies!"

Caelan sighed. "You just figured this out, and you're already thinking about bear cavalry?"

"I mean, why not?" Leopold threw his hands up. "Gotta aim high."*

He looked at him with the brightest eyes Caelan had seen yet. A dozen possibilities ran through his head—espionage, sabotage, battlefield scouting. If Leopold could take over insects, could he control birds? Rats? People? He shoved that last thought down for later. For now, he just smiled. "You know what? Yeah, that's pretty amazing. I'm impressed you managed to find that out on your own."

Chest stuffed, Leopold raised his nose in a comical way. "I can do something right when I put my mind to it."

"Too bad that doesn't work all the time, isn't it?"

In response, he gave a traditional barrage of insults.