Chapter 202: You Are Hungry

Elias burst into the ninth floor, in front of his door. Behind him, stone slammed into stone, and dust rose; the sound was so loud he could not hear or think, and he fell to his knees and simply breathed.

Lyssa was beside him, and she placed her hand on his shoulder, and she was speaking, but Elias could hardly understand her words.

Rhys emerged from the shadow of his door, his face was pale and his hands shaking, but Elias could see a bright light in the depths of his eyes; like him, Rhys had enjoyed this encounter.

“Phew… You made it,” Rhys said as he scratched his head. “It would be quite funny if you die on your first test, even though such a thing is not rare… I would still hate to see it happen to you.”

Elias could not answer him, since his body seemed to have shut down. After a few seconds, he raised his head and looked at both of his teachers.

“Was all that truly necessary?” he gestured behind him, but the crashing stone and the image of the cavern had disappeared, and he only saw staircases… if he was not feeling the strain of the past few hours, it would almost seem like he was in a dream.

Lyssa and Rhys exchanged a glance. Then Lyssa knelt beside him, her hand gentle on his cheek.

“The test,” she said, “was whether you would break. Your body and mind would be the greatest tools in your path ahead. This is important for a Siphon, but for an Ascendant Candidate like you, it is many times more necessary. Yes, whatever happened to you in this trial was necessary, and this is just the beginning.”

Elias thought of the shadows that he had controlled and the weight of the dead that he had carried for so long.

“I… I understand. I did not fail my first, at least,” he said.

“No,” Lyssa said. “You didn’t.”

She helped him to his feet. “You shall rest for three days and pursue other activities that you want. You have done well, Elias.”

A moment later, they were gone, and his doors opened before him, and Mira was waiting for him behind them.

She took one look at him and went to work without a word, and Elias could not have appreciated her more.

The bath was already drawn, steam rising from its surface, and she helped him out of his ruined clothes before slowly lowering him into the water, and left him there with a cup of something warm that tasted of honey and herbs.

By the time he emerged, wrapped in a robe that felt softer than anything he had ever owned, she had fresh clothes laid out on the bed and a meal waiting on the table.

He ate, drank, and let his body finally, truly begin to heal.

Mira sat in the corner, pretending to read a book, watching him with quiet eyes. She did not ask where he had been or what had happened.

All she knew was that he had been gone for hours for training and had returned looking as if he had crawled through hell and back.

’Perhaps, he has,’ she thought, when she remembered the faint aura that had lingered around him when he returned and the fact that his ruined clothes refused to burn for hours, as if they had touched something that resisted even flames from alchemical fires.

She waited by the side, hoping that he would confide in her, while praying for the strength and wisdom to be able to help if he needed it.

Elias finished the meal, set down the cup, and looked at her.

“Thank you,” he said.

Mira smiled and gave a small bow. “Rest,” she said. “Tomorrow, you train again.”

He closed his eyes, “No, not for another three days, but I will still be busy.”

Tomorrow, he would continue his training, and what he wanted to do was to rest, but Elias glimpsed the table where the Alchemy box lay, and he decided to push tiredness aside and check his progress so he could push his abilities forward, then he would begin learning alchemy.

He had almost spent the entire day in his first trial, and time could not feel more fleeting.

This was Elias’s plan, but he found his legs moving towards the bedroom.

There was a need from his core that he could not deny… something so potent that he knew he could not stop his sleep even if his head would be cut off.

Elias’ eyes went wide as he climbed onto his bed, and his mind vanished into darkness.

He would not know that he would sleep for four days.

®

The alleys in this city were always hungry, but some were hungrier than others.

Long before the boy with yellow eyes crawled from his mother’s corpse, this narrow passage between the tannery and the old brick warehouse had been a place where things ended.

Drunks, debtors, girls who walked home alone… There was a reason the rapist picked this particular alley.

The city’s teeth were many, and the alley was one of the places where they bit deepest. Now it had new teeth.

Something monstrous resided deep inside this alley, and every now and then, twisted creatures emerged in threes.

These creatures were once one person; now they were legion, and in this alley, there were always a dozen of them hanging around.

One of them had not moved in three days. Its limbs were folded at angles that should have broken them, its spine curved, its head tilted to catch the sounds of the waking city around it.

The boy had told it to find a place to die. It and some others remain close to where they were born.

Perhaps it did not know the difference, perhaps the thing that had been Luka no longer cared.

Or maybe it knew that even if it did not go far, death would soon find it. It was only a matter of time.

It heard footsteps. Light and quick, maybe a child or a woman who was in a hurry and did not want to be noticed.

It turned out to be a young woman who was hurrying to work before the sun rose. Her boots clicked on the cobblestones, and the creature in the shadows uncurled.

It moved without sound or thought. The hunger that had been planted in its chest was not its own, but it obeyed. It always obeyed.

With its unique physiology, it could live for thousands of years without eating as it slowly consumed its body for survival, but an unnatural hunger was inside of it, compelling it to hunt and kill, and in turn, it could be hunted and killed.

The woman did not see it coming, and she did not have time to scream.

The creature’s claws closed around her throat, and she was lifted from the ground, her feet kicking, her hands clawing at the thing that held her.

Her eyes were wide, her mouth open, but no sound came out. The creature had learned that screams drew attention.

It pulled her into the darkness, and the alley swallowed her whole.

When the sun rose, there was nothing left. The creature had consumed everything, and now it was larger, stronger, hungrier. It would need to feed again soon.

The boy had told it to die. But the hunger was stronger than the command, and the hunger was spreading.

Soon, it knew it would go into the city to die, so that it could be reborn… again… again… and again.

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