The Author’s Game 10. First Checkpoint

The younger guard had his weapon raised.

Both hands on the grip, tracking Eclipse with the fixed attention of soone who has identified a target and is waiting for confirmation before doing sothing about it. His Odic Drive was running at full defensive output, the hum of it higher and rougher than his partner's, the sound of a circuit pushed past its comfortable range by the specific urgency of right now. His hands were not entirely steady. Aiming at sothing that should not exist and was not behaving like sothing that should not exist tended to produce that quality in a person's hands.

The older guard had not raised his weapon.

He had his hand on it. His eyes moved to the mont I stepped into the light and did not leave . His Odic Drive was running at a lower, steadier frequency: the controlled tone of a circuit that had been activated enough tis that activation was automatic rather than urgent, and whose owner was currently using the saved cognitive capacity to run an assessnt instead of a reaction.

His eyes moved to my shoulders, to the ground at my feet, to the space just behind to the left. Then back to my face.

His jaw set slightly.

The air around was cold. Not forest-cold, not morning-cold. The specific cold that had traveled with out of the loop, the after-effect of seven subjective days in a field that had maintained a consistent temperature of absence. Lighter than it had been inside, but present. Consistent. The kind of cold that did not match the morning weather and did not match any explanation that did not involve sothing unusual.

The younger guard's breath ca out visible. He noticed this. His eyes moved briefly to his own breath cloud and then back to Eclipse, and sothing in his face did the adjustnt of a person who has registered a strange detail and decided to deal with it after they deal with the more imdiately concerning thing.

The older guard's circuit shifted frequency. Detection array. His Odic Drive was reading the ambient space around and producing a result that did not match what his eyes were telling him. His eyes said one student. His circuit said sothing else was in the sa location, not quite visible, at a temperature that had no business being attached to a living person.

He did not look at the space behind again after that first scan.

He kept his eyes on my face.

"That was mine," I said. My voice ca out even. Seven subjective days of operating at baseline while various things tried to end had apparently recalibrated what even ant.

"The shard. Eclipse. It belongs to ."

The younger guard's aim did not waver. He was looking at now, Eclipse and I both in his sight line, the threat assessnt not resolving because the two things were not combining into a single category.

"Prove it," he said. His voice was admirably steady for soone whose breath was still coming out in clouds.

Fair.

I have never dematerialized Eclipse before. Not in this body. I have not attended orientation. I do not know the official process.

I know that Eclipse is mine. I know that mine ans sothing in this world that is more specific than ownership. I know that the bounded state is the default and the materialized state is the active choice, which ans returning to bounded should be a matter of releasing the choice. Theoretically.

I have also been awake for what my body insists is several days.

This is fine. This is completely manageable.

I looked at Eclipse.

And then I looked at the space to the left of Eclipse, where the cold was concentrated, where the shadow radius was currently located with the specific quality of sothing that had been watching the guards with great interest since I stepped out of the trees.

"I need you to go inside for a mont," I said, quietly. Directed at the cold space rather than at Eclipse. "The cold is. It's a problem right now."

The cold did not imdiately move.

I waited.

The younger guard's eyes flicked to the space I was addressing and then back to my face with an expression that had moved past the threat assessnt into a different and less-categorized kind of attention.

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The shadow radius shifted. Not toward Eclipse. Not away from . The specific movent of sothing that had heard and understood and was not imdiately complying, the way a person takes a breath before doing sothing they would rather not do. The cold intensified briefly, a single mont of being colder than it had been, like a held breath.

Then it moved.

The cold at my left side drew inward, slow, the temperature differential narrowing as the shadow radius contracted toward Eclipse. Not instantly. The pace of sothing that was moving because it had decided to move and not because it was being pushed. Eclipse's light shifted as the shadow entered it: the sa pale quality but with a depth underneath it that had not been there before, the way a room looks different when there is soone else in it even if you cannot imdiately see them.

The cold dropped.

Not entirely. The after-effect of seven loops in my own body was still there, a residual that had nothing to do with the shadow and everything to do with what loop-ti does to a circuit that is not built for it. But the anomalous cold, the specific cold that had been reading as wrong on the older guard's detection array, had gone from a standing presence to sothing closer to a draft. Noticeable. Not alarming.

The older guard's circuit frequency shifted again. The detection array recalibrating. His jaw unclenched slightly, the micro-expression of soone whose ambient threat reading has downgraded one category without their conscious input.

He did not say anything about this.

I reached inward toward Eclipse.

It was not a button. It was more like asking, or rembering specifically and deliberately that Eclipse had never been separate from and that the materialized state was a choice rather than a default, and that releasing the choice was a matter of releasing the thing that was holding it in place. I found the edge of that and let go.

I found the edge.

I let go.

And then the circuit closed around both of them.

Eclipse first — that part I knew. Eclipse folding back to bounded state, the light collapsing inward, the space at my right shoulder going empty. That part was what I had calculated for. What I had not fully calculated for was the shadow already being inside Eclipse when Eclipse returned to bounded state inside my F-Rank circuit, which ant the circuit was now being asked to contain:

One Shard.

One Phantasm.

At F-Rank capacity.

And then I felt it.

The sensation arrived approximately half a second after the fold completed and it was very specifically not pain.

Not heavy. That was the wrong word entirely. Heavy implied weight pressing downward, sothing external resting on sothing structural. This was not that. This was internal — a pull, low and specific, sowhere in the center of my chest below the sternum. The faint sustained draw of a circuit that was now being asked to hold sothing it had not been built to hold at its current capacity.

F-Rank circuit. That was what the reset had left . The functional equivalent of a reservoir that had been drained to its base level and was now being asked to house not one but two resident entities: Eclipse, which was bounded to and had been since the beginning, and the shadow, which was now inside Eclipse, which was inside my circuit, which ant the shadow was now drawing from the sa source Eclipse drew from.

It is not painful.

My legs are still standing. My face is still doing the correct thing. My voice, when I speak next, will co out even. All of these things are decisions I am currently making and continuing to make while my solar plexus communicates its situation to with the persistent specificity of sothing that has been asked to carry more than it was sized for and is not going to let that go unacknowledged.

That awareness has a texture. Cool. Faintly cool, like a slow exhale moving outward from the center of my chest.

The shadow is inside the shard, which is inside my circuit, and my circuit is F-Rank, and the shadow draws from it passively, and I will feel that draw every mont until I recover enough capacity to stop noticing it.

Reminder: do not do Shardcraft today. Do not attempt any output-intensive process today. Do not do anything that makes demands on a circuit that is already at the upper edge of what F-Rank can hold without incident.

Today has been full of things I was not supposed to do.

I only wish to go to the Grand Hall now.

The younger guard was staring at the space where Eclipse had been with the expression of soone whose primary threat has vacated the location where he was tracking it and is now nowhere he can point to.

"Where did it go," he said.

"Bounded state. Inside my circuit." I paused. "Is that the correct terminology. I haven't been to orientation yet."

The older guard exhaled once, through his nose. His Odic Drive stepped down from detection frequency to passive standby. He looked at for a long mont.

Then he looked at the space to my left where the cold was now only the residual variety and not the anomalous variety.

He did not comnt on the temperature.

"Lower it," he said to his partner.

The younger guard's weapon ca to carry position. Not holstered. His eyes were moving between and the empty shoulder space with the expression of soone whose threat assessnt had closed and whose personal assessnt was still very much open.

"Na," the older guard said.

"Arzane Vornelius Astarte. First year."

A beat.

"You haven't confird your house assignnt," he said, "because you haven't been to orientation."

"Correct."

"Because."

"I was in Sector Three."

The younger guard made a sound. His professionalism held the comnt.

"We heard the anomaly close," the older guard said. His voice was flat in the specific way of soone choosing flatness because the alternative required engaging with things he had not budgeted ti for.

"Yes."

"From inside."

"Yes."

He looked at for a mont. At the mud on both knees. At the gash on my hand. At the fern that had, against all reasonable expectation, remained in my hair through everything that had happened since I acquired it. At the general condition of soone who had spent a quantity of ti sowhere they were not supposed to be and was presenting all available evidence of this without appearing to be aware of doing so.

His expression was a flat surface with sothing underneath it that was not flatness.

He is not asking the obvious questions. Why is he not asking the obvious questions.

It would be strategically ideal if he continued not asking them.