First Among Equals Chapter 7: It Whispers His Name

“What?” Zeris asked.

“I...” he began, the words catching in his throat. His spirit roiled chaotically within him. A tendril ca loose, flailing about. The last ti his spirit had moved this violently was when he was still a child learning to control its movents. “I think I might have four bloodlines.”

“That doesn't… are you sure?” She stood up, apparently concerned. Her spirit grazed his. “You don't look well, Caen.”

“I don't feel well either,” he mumbled, still pacing.

Fear gripped his chest tightly and wouldn't let go. What if he hadn't gone out with Zeris this evening? What if Fermien hadn't been in the city? The possibilities horrified him.

It'd been a fluke. re chance.

He'd been searching for the illusory third bloodline with no hints or progress all this ti. And a very unlikely eting had resolved that lifelong issue in monts.

How in the three realms was he supposed to find a fourth?

“Co,” Zeris said. “Sit. Let take a look at your spirit.” They sat on the floor, and she extended a probe into his spirit.

It roiled and churned with such intensity that her extension could not properly navigate his spirit.

“I can't…” she said, shaking her head. “We need to get soone better at this.”

Caen nodded, standing up to begin pacing once more. The tri-clinic would be closed by now. The pressure from his spirit was so distracting. He looked within himself and, with a careful spell, tried to suppress his spirit. It was a relatively easy working, but his spirit was even less cooperative than usual.

His trembling fingers persisted, however, and about fifteen minutes and two dozen attempts later, the spell took. It smothered his sense of self for an instant, blocking out the frantic impressions that leaked out from his spirit.

The panic receded, but the discomfort of doing this was far more severe for those with sensitive spiritual faculties. It felt like he'd been bound and blindfolded.

This was still so much better than the rabid urgency that had overco him monts ago.

His hands, his entire body, trembled. A migraine was pulsing behind his eyes, his heart thumping vigorously in his chest.

He couldn't stop himself from pacing. Even with his spirit suppressed as it was, there was so much nervous energy in his body. He felt the need to move, to do sothing. To not just sit still.

“Do you want to try so deep, calming ditation?” Zeris asked.

“No,” he said, fidgeting with his fingers. “I don't think I even could.” The re thought of forcing himself to sit down and ditate caused the discomfort from his suppressed spirit to flare.

“Uncle Vai?” Zeris asked.

Caen shook his head, “We can't know if he'll be back yet, and I won't be able to fall asleep in this state—not sure I'd even want to.”

“Mm, fair enough,” Zeris said, standing up to leave. “Let check if anyone is left at the tri-clinic. Healer Dodri might still be in the helper's lounge. Don't go anywhere.”

When he didn't answer, she scowled at him.

“Where would I even go?" he said.

She ran out of the hall.

Caen couldn't read in this state. His thoughts felt disjointed. A mory from years ago troubled his recollection.

“You may feel an urgency the closer you co to pinpointing the location of your hidden bloodline,” Elder Gev had said. “I once examined a young woman who reported just that — an almost feverish drive to search her spirit until she discovered what was missing.”

Sothing was, in fact, missing.

Caen ran a hand through his hair again, mumbling to himself.

A fourth bloodline.

He felt a desperate drive seeping through to his mind. An insistence to discover. Caen tentatively released the hold on his spirit, like unclenching a fist.

He gasped as the urgency pumlled into him, clawing at his mind, at his thoughts, churning his spirit.

He desperately worked hard to smother his spirit again. There was no way he could get anything done with that much distraction.

He considered tiring out his spirit by exhausting his mana, but if that didn't work, he would be stuck for the entire day without mana.

Caen pulled out his pocket watch to check the ti. Nearly 6 in the evening. Aunt Vensha had invited him to gather for her party. If he made it there within an hour, he could probably catch them before they went through the Planar Aperture.

He made his way to the temple's back rooms. He often kept his bag and gear in his mother's storage closet there.

If he could exhaust both his body and mind along with his spirit, it might help him better understand what was going on, and Aunt Vensha would be able to help his spirit while he did it.

Zeris bumped into him on his way there. “You assured you wouldn't leave. Literally!”

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“Actually, I was going to find you before I left,” he said sheepishly as they made their way up the stairs. “I’m going to et up with Aunt Vensha at Mal-dawn.”

“How? The next train doesn't co through for another two hours.”

Mal-dawn was about a four-and-a-half-hour walk away from the Drenlin train station. The dirt path on the terrain wasn't terrible, but he couldn't run that far in any appreciable ti.

“I’ll rent a bicycle,” he said, turning into a passageway.

Bandits were rare this close to Drenlin because of frequent Valiant activity, and only a few wild creatures and beasts inhabited the surrounding woodlands.

“And I'm guessing you can't wait for the train?”

He shook his head.

“Then I'm going with you,” she said. “I've never seen your spirit this disturbed before.”

Neither had he. That was part of what had him so worried.

As an Edict priestess, his mother had her own storage closet in the temple. It was a very compact enclosure, and she hardly ever used it for anything. For months now, Caen and Zeris had taken to storing so of their Valiant gear in here.

They strode out of the temple together, hauling backpacks. The sun stained the sky as it dipped behind the horizon.

There was a post office around the street corner where couriers often hung around till they got errands to run. He intended to borrow a pair of bicycles from there. It was late in the day, and a group of young couriers sat chatting by the steps of the squat building.

Caen recognized one of them from the train earlier that morning. Norna's younger brother. The grumpy one, she'd called him.

“Hello, Parno,” Caen said, walking up briskly to them. “Can I have a word, please?”

The couriers all turned to Caen and Zeris, who trailed behind him. Most of them eyed the speculon on his forehead.

Parno frowned but pushed off the wall he'd been leaning against. “You're the priest guy from the train this morning. I'm done delivering ssages for the day.” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “You might want to ask these louts, though.”

“Actually, I'd like to borrow two bicycles,” Caen said, rummaging through the coin purse on his belt.

“Look, man, I don't know you. I can't just lend you my…” he trailed off as Caen pulled out a pair of pomms and one glowing low criyl.

Zeris made a strangled sound. This was a few months’ worth of savings. For him at least. With a few more pomms, he could probably purchase two fairly used bikes on the other side of town. But that was too far out of their way.

The boy's eyes shone with greed. “You're crazy,” he said. Though he reached forward and snatched the money from Caen's open palm, as if worried he would change his mind. “I'll get you a second bike right now.”

* * *

Caen and Zeris hurriedly hauled the creaky bicycles to the edge of town. His roiling spirit, even suppressed, spurred his steps.

“These are terrible,” Zeris said, laughing as they walked uphill. “They don't even have decent pedals.”

They couldn't ride yet because of the steep incline. But fortunately, the path from the train station down to the Mal-dawn Coppice Plane was a decline. Using a bicycle would shave off a great deal of the journey's duration.

The bikes proved to be a lot more difficult to maneuver over uneven terrain than he'd been expecting. Though Zeris had a much better ti of doing this than he did, due to her passive augntations and more extensive experience with biking.

They were moving at mostly unmanageable speeds. It took a good while for him to get a feel for the terrain, but he jostled ever closer to his destination on the dirt road, making even better ti than he'd been hoping to while managing to avoid smashing into any trees.

The decline plateaued and began rising up at an angle that wasn't nearly as steep as the decline had been. Caen didn't have enough ti to beat himself up ntally. He'd only ever co this way by train, and it hadn’t occurred to him that he would have to deal with an incline this soon.

They abandoned the bicycles there and made the rest of the journey on foot, stopping a few tis to catch their breath. Zeris wasn’t as winded as he was, of course. It was well past sunset, and the remnant daylight was fast fading.

A Planar archway jutted into the sky above the treeline. Not Mal-dawn. This was Redshadow. Most Planar Apertures had archways built around them. It stabilized the breach between Planar dinsions and alerted Valiant Watchers when sothing otherworldly was attempting to make its way out of the Plane.

They had to pass Redshadow on their way to Mal-dawn. The distance by train was sothing like five minutes, but more than four tis longer on foot.

Sotis, he felt a cold chill whenever their train went past this specific archway. Nothing had actually happened all the nurous tis he’d entered, which was quite odd.

They moved closer to the archway, all the sa, trying to cut a shorter route to Mal-dawn. Then Caen stumbled.

Even with his spirit smothered, he felt a painfully familiar sensation. Sothing tugging him towards the Redshadow archway. It was the sa feeling he'd felt with Magister Fermien at the Drenlin plaza just hours ago.

The chaos in Caen's spirit leaked out into his mind. Into his body.

He needed to go into that Plane. He knew it like he knew the sun had set. Knew it like he knew his na.

It was the most important thing in the world.

Caen hesitated, halting in his tracks.

Zeris looked back, confused. “Why’d you stop?”

“I'm thinking,” he said, staring at the archway, “that maybe I should go there instead.”

“What are you—” She followed his gaze, and her expression darkened. “Caen, no. That… no.”

He started walking towards Redshadow.

“Hey, hey!” She ran in front of him to block his path. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Listen—”

“I don't know that I should,” she said. “You're being very erratic right now.”

“Zeris, I can sense sothing from there.”

“And I can't,” she answered in exasperation. “Caen, I have spatial acuity.”

“Zeris, it's the exact sa thing I experienced with Fermien. It might be related to my fourth bloodline.”

She folded her arms, seeming to struggle with herself.

“Just hours ago, I experienced sothing that solved the biggest mystery of my life,” he said. “Only for to discover there was an even bigger one. If there's the remotest chance that Redshadow holds any clues…” he shook his head, “I can't let it pass by. Zeris, I’m going in there. I have to. It's a risk I'm willing to take.”

“You don't have a party,” she said, her frown deepening.

“I’ll join one there.”

“Caen—”

“I'm a Gatherer. It won't be difficult.” Partying up with strangers had its risks, but he'd done so several tis before.

“We could go and get Aunt Vensha. Find her in Mal-dawn, if we have to, and bring her back here,” Zeris said. “Your spirit—”

“And what if I don't feel this sensation anymore by then? What if I have a very small window of opportunity? I can't afford to go another however number of years being stunted. I need to try. I'm not asking you to co along with—”

“Oh, shut up,” she said. “If you're going in there, I'm coming with you.”

“Thank you,” he said, already walking in the direction of the Redshadow archway.