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tenspontaneite · 2 years ago

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The Ceracurist (Chapter 8/?)

“That should’ve – you should-“ She couldn’t say it.

His lips twisted, wry and sad. He lowered his hand. “…I should be dead?"

(Chapter length: 8k. Ao3 link)

Chapter warnings: Truthfinding insights into past severe injury, and the long-lasting consequences thereof.

---

Rayla woke to the sensation of weight on her back and shoulders; several sharp points poked into her upper arm, and the sound of the breath of some sort of small animal puffed in her ear. She groaned, hand flailing clumsily up to her back, and it landed in feathers. An inquisitive, birdlike trill followed.

“…Stabby?” she hazarded a guess, still half-asleep, and only remembering that one of the pygmy gryphon’s many names. The creature chirped happily in response, and started preening her hair. Rayla considered this for a second, deemed it acceptable, and then let her hand fall down again. The gryphon continued preening her.

It took a minute of this for her to wake enough to regain her wits, and thereupon she noticed several things in short order. First of which: she was sore in that familiar post-game way, this time diffuse and distributed across her body in a way that matched the impact of the wind-blast she remembered. Her neck was a bit stiff from the blow she’d taken there. It was okay. Second…

She picked at her side. There was a blanket on her, now. It hadn’t been there when she went to sleep. Didn’t even wake up, she thought to herself, a little disparagingly. Apparently alcohol made her sleep pretty deeply. That was important to know.

There was no particular hangover, though. That was nice.

Rayla tolerated the gryphon’s attentions for a while longer, noting that Soren was still asleep and snoring on the sofa opposite, and noting that it was actually pretty early in the morning…at least by student-on-holiday standards, anyway. It was like, eight. She couldn’t hear anyone moving in the house…

…Someone outside, though. In the garden?

She listened, idle and sleepy, for long enough to grow curious. Finally she reached behind her to pick up the gryphon, sitting up and rolling her shoulders and cracking her neck in a series of pops and clicks. It all felt very stiff. She should probably do some stretches.

Absently, she scritched into the neck feathers of the gryphon, smiling at the happy trill that elicited. Then she put the little animal down, and stood to go investigate the quiet shuffling sounds in the garden. Her various tendons and ligaments complained at her as she went.

The doors to the garden were wide open, letting in the warm dewy air of the summer morning. It smelled fresh out there, with that hint of brine that was omnipresent this close to the sea. On the patio close to the house, Callum was standing with his face lifted to the sun, back turned to her; he clearly hadn’t heard her approaching.

His torso was bare and pale in the morning light, and utterly littered with scars.

Still half-asleep, she hadn’t been prepared for the way that took the breath out of her. It felt like being hit in the chest and left winded; she swayed in place, abruptly disoriented, truthfinder’s sense telling her things she wasn’t awake enough to hear. Instead, she was left strangely stunned, lingering at the doorway with half-formed impressions of harm dancing confusingly at the edges of her mind.

Distractedly, she noted that he was doing some kind of arm stretch, though turned away like that she couldn’t quite see what. She shook her head, strangely dizzy, then finally mastered herself enough to call a greeting to him: “Morning?”

He startled, making a wordless sound of surprise as he swivelled around. His startle response seemed to include lifting a finger as if to draw a rune, which she could only approve of. But as he turned to face her-

She saw the scars on his front, too.

Saw the scar on his throat.

“Rayla!” He said, cheerful, eyes lighting up at the sight of her. But she was in no state to reciprocate that warmth. “Wow, you’re up earlier than I thought you’d be. Soren usually sleeps pretty much ‘til lunch, after…game…days?” Finally, he seemed to notice something was amiss. “Er. Is something wrong?”

Rayla lingered, dizzy and motionless, caught in a flood of knowing too intense to break away from. Except then the phantom pains shattered across her skin, and she shuddered, and that was just enough to allow her to tear her eyes away. She spotted a small garden table and chairs nearby, and staggered there unthinkingly, falling into a chair heavily enough that its legs screeched against the patio. She meant to wipe her hands over her face, but somehow ended up clutching her throat instead.

Callum followed, of course. He hurried over and then hovered by her side, hand touching to her shoulder. “Are you hungover?” He asked, pragmatically. “Gonna throw up?”

She managed to laugh, somehow, and shook her head. “I – no. No. It’s…” She cleared her throat, bizarrely surprised that she was still able to breathe. That the words weren’t bubbling through thick blood as she spoke them. “It’s a – truthfinder thing. Just…give me a minute.”

“A – but what could you-“ His voice broke off as, clearly, he made the connection. She’d never seen him shirtless before; she’d never even seen his neck bare. He kept himself covered up, even in the height of summer, for a reason. “…Oh.”

Rayla breathed. Slowly, Callum withdrew his hand. He hesitated for a moment, then lowered himself into one of the other chairs, opposite her own.

“…Are you okay?”

It seemed such an absurd question, with what she’d seen. But then, these scars weren’t new to him, were they? Five years. Maybe six. He’d lived that long with them on his skin, in his flesh. It was an old hurt to him now. He was used to it. “I’ll be fine,” she croaked, and finally got herself to look up. Moon Dying, it really didn’t look any better the second time. “Just – wasn’t expecting that.”

“Sorry. I can…er, put a shirt on? If that would help?” He sounded a little awkward, but earnest all the same.

He’d had it off for a reason, presumably. “Nah. It’s okay. Just…” She exhaled. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to check out on you, there.”

He just looked at her. Plainly curious, but leaving it up to her whether or not she wanted to explain. She thought she owed it to him, to explain.

Unwillingly, compulsively, her fingers clutched over the pulse in her throat. She swallowed. “It was…”

“The scars?” He guessed, understandingly. She wondered how many times he’d watched people react to them. Wondered how many had recoiled in horror. Wondered how many had known what they meant.

She shook her head, because it wasn’t that, not really. She’d seen scars. She’d seen his scars, and even seeing his back – that had been horrifying, but not overwhelming.

It was just like his arms, wasn’t it? The whole expanse of his skin, over his arms and shoulders, stretching lengthways and crossways over his back, stretching around his sides and beneath the hem of his trousers. All of it marred with thick, jagged scars, like fissures in stone. Like cracks in ice, if that ice had cracked from something breaking out from within. She could see that now, as she hadn’t been able to with just his arms. She could see it, but she couldn’t understand it. What could have possibly made his skin crack and burst like that?

His front was just the same. Just the same; thick scar tissue like fractures across his form. Up his chest, up his collar, and there – there-

“Your throat,” she said, softly, and his hand twitched up to mirror hers. His fingers grazed lightly over the shape of that terrible scar; thinner and shallower than most on his body, but the location of it – that made all the difference. “That should’ve – you should-“ She couldn’t say it.

His lips twisted, wry and sad. He lowered his hand. “…I should be dead?”

Right into the artery. It was deep enough for that. The arterial spray…even without accounting for the other vicious wounds all over his body, he should’ve bled out in minutes. Unconscious within seconds, and then so soon gone.

He should be dead.

“…Yeah,” she agreed, pulse feeling strange in her throat. She could almost feel the mortal wound, the knowing of it keener than she’d ever wanted it to be. The Moon, and a truthfinder’s talents, had such affinity for death, after all.

Callum nodded, eyes just a little faraway, as if he could feel the ghost of that wound too. “I got…really lucky,” he said in the end, and she wanted to laugh but couldn’t. The only kind of luck that could’ve saved him, she knew, was being within a minute’s distance of an astoundingly talented magical healer.

“…Sorry,” she said quietly, and looked away. “Didn’t mean to barge into your garden and bring up painful memories.” She managed an explanation this time. “Just – truthfinding’s good at death-things. Like mortal wounds.”

He opened his mouth, frowned, then closed it again. He considered something in silence. Then he said, voice a little odd, “That’s in Scion of Shadow, actually. I thought it was just, you know, exaggerated. One of the supernatural elements. But maybe not?”

The thought of the video game was so jarring in this context that she snorted, surprised. “I’ll tell you when I get there, I suppose.”

“Sorry for accidentally hitting you in the truthfinding with my scars,” he offered, rueful. “I was just – it’s my wake-up routine, I didn’t think about it. And I didn’t think you’d be up for a while.”

“I’m usually up early,” she said automatically, without thinking of it, then processed what he’d said. She squinted, then turned her head to look at him properly. Considered what she’d found him in the process of – stretches? She took a fresh look at his scars and instantly understood. “…Physiotherapy?”

He looked surprised for a second, then impressed. He nodded, then gestured at himself with a splayed hand. “Yeah. All – this – kind of, you know. Caused problems? So…”

Rayla considered each visible line of scarring, letting the knowledge snap into place behind her eyes as it aligned with all she knew of human and elven bodies. All the muscles, the tendons, the nerves. “Lots of stretches and exercises,” she guessed, though she already knew. “Keep your mobility and strength up as much as you can.”

“I do pretty well, considering.” He shrugged, and actually did seem pretty nonchalant about the whole thing. She had no doubt, looking at him then, that he’d been doing these stretches every day for years. “So long as I keep on top of it, I’m actually not much less mobile than I should be.”

“I can tell,” she said honestly. If he’d been severely hampered by those scars, she’d have noticed the moment she met him. Instead, due to his hard work and – she suddenly knew – lots and lots of surgery, he just came across as kind of stilted-looking at times, and that was all. He’d never be able to manage the sort of strength and flexibility an uninjured man could train for, but through herculean effort…he’d got himself this far.

It was honestly very impressive.

She carefully ignored the stupid besotted part of her that appreciated that impressiveness more than it ought.

“I should get back to it, actually,” he said, a little awkwardly. He wanted to keep sitting with her, let himself be distracted by talk, but – this routine was so ingrained it was almost ritual by now. He woke up; he did his exercises. Always, every day, no matter what else was going on. Rayla could see that in him, clear as anything. “If you want to go raid the kitchen for breakfast, you should feel free? Or, whatever you want, really.”

Rayla considered it, and considered him. He hadn’t been expecting this encounter, nor her reactions, but he didn’t necessarily want her to go. She didn’t particularly want to go, either. “…If you don’t mind, I might join you,” she said, slowly. “I’ve got a stretching routine of my own, y’know. Not like yours, and I’m not so consistent at it. But…”

He looked surprised, then pleased. “Oh, right, you’re an agility-and-stealth fighter, yeah.” He stood, then nodded to the little garden shed off to the side. “Want a mat? I was about to get one out, anyway.”

“Please.” She stood as well, and watched him leave and then return with two broad mats, made of some sort of flexible and layered woven reed. They didn’t roll up; he just dragged them out, letting their edges scrape against the patio, then let them each fall heavily down. He flashed her a smile, then got on his own and returned to work.

Rayla was perfectly used to doing stretches and exercises in groups, though it had been a while. The most she ever did with her bellator teammates was warm-up stretches before training, or before a game. But setting up here, preparing for her full exercises with another person…it was unexpectedly affecting. She felt a pang of homesickness yet again, missing training with Runaan, but settled in to work anyway.

She started more cautiously than usual; she did have yesterday’s aches and pains to work out, after all. But before long she was easing into the usual stretches, gently pushing the limits of her flexibility, letting her body loosen up into the limberness she’d worked so diligently for over the years. Callum worked, too. His exercises were very different – excruciatingly careful stretches, small repetitive strengthening exercises, working pretty much all the way down his body. He sat down on the mat to work on his legs, and she understood without needing to ask or see that the scarring extended there as well.

What happened to him? She wondered, but didn’t try to know the answer. For now, the morning was quiet and peaceful, and she could feel sunlight on her skin. Birdsong was alive in the air, and she was ‘training’ with someone she liked for the first time in months. Both of them worked in comfortable silence. It was…nice.

“This was nice,” Callum said, once they were done and putting the mats away, as though to directly echo her thoughts. “Sometimes Soren works out with me but it’s not the same, you know? That’s all…energetic. Not…” He searched for a word.

“Calm,” Rayla offered, quiet. Some part of her was feeling strange about it. Every other time she’d spent with him hadn’t been anywhere near calm. “Meditative?”

“Yeah.” He flashed her a smile, went to put his shirt back on, then turned to head indoors. She followed.

Every time she’d met him or spoken to him, she’d either been mortified, socially awkward, nervous, excited about gaming, or some combination thereof. It hadn’t quite occurred to her that she could be comfortable with him. The lassitude of it lingered, settling easily along the languid relaxation in her limbs. Her heart fluttered.

Soren was still asleep on the sofa when they went in, with Stabby the gryphon curled up on his chest in a perfect orb of feathers and fur. She spied a blanket underneath, similar to the one she’d woken beneath, and glanced sideways at Callum as they went quietly through to the kitchen.

“Where did the blankets come from…?” She murmured to him, settling at the table where he indicated, and watching distractedly as he went to rummage in the coldbox. His shirt, though back in place, was not long-sleeved. He wasn’t wearing a scarf, either. The scars were very, very visible.

He paused, and it took him a second to figure out what she was talking about. “Oh, that was me,” he said, embarrassed. “I’m kind of used to slinging one over Soren when he comes back late like that, honestly. He always crashes on the couch. And it’s not the first time a friend joined him, either. So.” He shrugged, then nodded to the contents of the box. “Is there anything you feel like? We’ve still got loads of leftovers from the party, if you, you know, don’t mind eating dinner or dessert for breakfast.”

She blinked, abruptly realising that she was being offered food. Her belly rumbled. “Er. No, I don’t mind,” she said, and then over a series of exchanges negotiated her way through the options to be presented with a plate of cold fruit pie, no longer particularly crisp, but still tasty. Callum opted for a slice of his birthday cake, keeping up a quiet but inquisitive chatter throughout the meal.

“City team won, of course,” she said ruefully, when asked how the game had gone. “We pretty much suck in open combat scenarios. We’ve lost almost every time. Wasn’t any different yesterday. Plus, their Earth mage has been training to counter me, apparently.”

His eyes lit up at that. “Amata, right? Soren said she’d been working on something.” He paused, then added “I wasn’t supposed to tell you before the match, though. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise for not giving up team secrets.” She shook her head at him, amused. “Honestly though, I think she should’ve sat on it for longer before trying it. Another month, maybe, until she got better range. She couldn’t detect me in her earth until I was pretty close.”

“Probably they were just kinda desperate. They’ve really been pushing for finding counters for you, ever since that match you nearly won the game without your team even hitting anyone,” Callum claimed, grinning a little. “And you have the highest average kill count in your team, apparently? Of course, when I was hearing all this, it was about Stabby Moonshadow Girl, but…you know.”

Rayla snorted. “Well, I don’t know about that,” she said, after a moment. “The kill count, I mean.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “How many knockouts did you get yesterday, then?”

“Uh.” She tried to think. “I don’t know?” There’d been Ligorus, at the start, and the Earthblood mage, and both of Soren’s melee buddies… “Maybe four?”

“So, nearly half the team on your own, you mean.” His tone was dry.

“Technically Soren too, but it was kind of a double knockout,” she added, lips twitching now despite herself.

“So actually half the team?”

She huffed. “Suppose so.” She considered it, and shrugged. “Suppose it makes sense they want to poach me, then.”

Predictably, this led to her relating some of the distinctly graceless recruitment attempts she’d endured last night, and that carried them through the rest of breakfast, the washing up thereof, and some awkward loitering thereafter. As soon as the topic petered out, they were left standing there aimlessly, half-leaning against the kitchen counters.

After what had been a surprisingly comfortable morning, the return of that awkwardness was jarring. Rayla cleared her throat, and glanced towards the door. “I should probably get going,” she offered, haltingly, following her first impulse. “I need to find a toothbrush. My breath tastes like booze.” It had been an excuse, but abruptly she wrinkled her nose, because it was true. The breakfast hadn’t quite managed to banish the distinctive tang of ‘you drank last night and then didn’t brush your teeth’.

Callum opened his mouth as though to suggest something, then shut it, looking embarrassed. Then he nodded, and obligingly followed her to the hallway, where she’d unthinkingly dumped her bellatorium pack alongside Soren’s as they got in. “That’s yours, right?” He asked, leaning to pick it up for her. He blinked. “Wow, this is way lighter than Soren’s.”

“Makes sense. I don’t use heavy armour.” She shrugged, and accepted it, slinging it over her shoulder. “Thanks.”

It should have been the right time for him to farewell her. Maybe open the door. Instead he lingered there, awkward but earnest, like he didn’t quite want to see her leave yet. “…Do you have much going on today?” He asked eventually, trying for casual and failing.

Rayla eyed him warily. “Training, in the evening. Aside from that, not really.” A pause. “Why?”

“I mean.” He cleared his throat. “If you don’t have plans – if you don’t mind – I could…come with you? We could hang out? It’s been a while since I visited the student residential wings, but – it’s not too far, right?”

She stared at him. It took her a few long seconds to formulate a response. “Callum,” she said, slowly. “Callum, no.”

He wilted. “Oh. Sorry. I mean, if you don’t-“

“No, it’s not that,” she cut him off, in response to his obvious anxiety that he’d overstepped. “It’s – Callum, you did not just offer to go off with me alone without your bodyguard or any of your friends knowing where you are.” Her voice was incredulous, and rightfully so. “Me, a suspicious elf with stealth, infiltration, and assassination training.”

“…Oh.” He abruptly looked embarrassed. “I mean…”

“You know your security people haven’t cleared me yet!” She shook her head at him, disbelievingly. “It’s like you’re asking to get kidnapped.”

“Soren trusts you!” Callum defended. “I can tell! He wouldn’t have brought you back last night if he didn’t.”

“That’s not the point,” she said, exasperated. “If I was your bodyguard you’d be getting so lectured right now.”

He smiled suddenly, and it was overwhelmingly charming. “What, more lectured than I am already?”

Her cheeks flushed. She pointed a finger at him. “Don’t get cheeky, or I’m telling Soren on you.” Despite the words, she couldn’t quite stop her lips from twitching. Dumb human, she thought.

“Yes, ma’am.” He flashed a grin at her, then ruefully went for the door. “Okay, then, no hanging out. Maybe some other time?”

She sighed at him, smiling helplessly. “Maybe so,” she allowed, hefting her bag and heading for the doorway. “…Bye, Callum.”

“See you later,” was his response to that, and…somehow, she knew she’d probably get home to find a Sunbeam message waiting for her.

She turned and left before the nonsense her heart was up to could show on her face.

---

After the walk home, Rayla took immediate refuge in the shared bathroom and didn’t emerge for the better part of an hour. When at last she collapsed fully onto her familiar bed, the computer was indeed blinking at her, and it was closer to midday than she’d have really preferred. She’d have to see about lunch, soon.

Wistfully, the besotted part of her mind wished that she’d been less sensible about things and allowed Callum to come along after all. It’d have been nice, grabbing lunch somewhere. Except – that would kind of be too much like – “Ugh,” she said aloud to herself, then finally went to check on her Sunbeam.

Her inbox was busy. From Runaan: a missed call, and a demand she call back, undoubtedly on the topic of the background check and the secrets she’d been keeping. From Kazi: a request for another Antiquitora meet-up. From Callum….

How far of a walk is it from here to your wing, anyway? That, sent very soon after she’d left the house, apparently an idle thought. And later by about an hour: Soren says thank you for not killing or kidnapping me while he was asleep. I think he’s joking? I think.

She huffed at that one, amused, and typed back: Aren’t you glad I didn’t take you up on your offer?

He was apparently at his computer, because a response was not long in coming. Yeah I’d have maybe gotten super told off for that one, now that I think about it. I wanted to hang out though :(

Rayla rolled her eyes at him over the screen, weirdly touched. We can call or something, it’s fine.

Apparently, he seemed to interpret this as an indicator to call now. Rayla blinked at the screen, startled, and when she reflexively accepted the call was very glad that she’d bothered to put a dressing gown on. “I didn’t mean now,” she greeted him, exasperated, and he smiled lopsidedly at her.

“Does that mean not-now, then?” He inquired, unbothered. He’d dressed more fully since she left, clad in new clothes that covered his arms, his usual red scarf around his neck. None of the scars were visible. “Like, is now a bad time?”

Rayla frowned, then hedged “Kinda? I should probably call Runaan soon, or he’ll…I don’t know, show up at my wing at three in the morning to lecture me or something.”

He blinked at her. “Who’s Runaan?”

“Oh.” Somehow, it hadn’t quite occurred to her how little Callum knew about her. One of many problems with being a truthfinder, she supposed. “He’s my…er…” She fell silent to mull over choices of words.

They’d always reacted weirdly when she called them her parents, so she generally didn’t, if they could hear it. It felt weird to call them uncles, though.

“He’s kind of one of my parents but not really,” she settled on eventually, just a little uncomfortable. “He and his husband raised me, though.”

Weirdly, he frowned at that. “But I thought – your parents…” He trailed off. “No, never mind, that’s – sorry, ignore me.”

For a second, she thought he looked embarrassed because he’d been about to ask something prying. But then she looked again. “What do you know about my parents?” She questioned, leaning forwards, suddenly alert. Did the background check come back already? No, surely not. It had only been a day.

He winced. “No, it’s nothing, I just – I shouldn’t have assumed, don’t worry about it. So, you were raised by this – Runaan?”

Rayla eyed him, deeply suspicious. He knew something about her parents, or at least thought he did. How? Why? She’d never spoken to him about them before.

Truthfinding nudged a flicker of memory a little closer: that moment at the game night, where Callum had looked at her name on the paper, Rayla of the Silvergrove, and had recognised the name of her hometown. Now a flash of insight – he’d recognised her name, specifically. Rayla of the Silvergrove reminded him of something that Rayla alone had not.

What under the Moon did that mean?

She was on the verge of opening her mouth to ask a sharp, prying question, but then – she stopped, reminding himself that he’d been able to answer The Security Question just fine. Whatever he knew, it wasn’t a threat. She didn’t need to follow it up. “You,” she declared, instead, “Are a pain in the truthfinding.”

He looked sheepish. “Sorry?”

Rayla rolled her eyes. “So, yes, I was raised by Runaan, and his husband Ethari, because my parents have important jobs that mean they need to live on-site. Which…” She stared at him, eyes narrowed, and really couldn’t help herself this time. “…You knew, didn’t you? You know who my parents are. You knew before anyone did a background check on me.” She paused, calculating. “You knew it a long time ago. Before you even met me…” She cut off at that last word, starkly aware of the subtle shift in his expression. Bewildered, she blinked at him. “…Not before you met me? How does that work?”

“You would make a great interrogator,” Callum commented ruefully, instead of answering any of that. It didn’t really stop her mind from working.

They’d met at a horn salon less than a month ago, or so she’d very sensibly assumed. But looking at him now…

“Have we met before?” She demanded, incredulous. It was the only thing that made sense. “Before last month? How?”

They had. She could see it, clear as moonlight, in the way he winced. What in Xadia’s name- “Please at least wait for the background check to come back?” He pleaded, pained. “I know you could probably just figure it out now, but – the security guys will get really annoyed if I have to tell them you know before I’m allowed to tell you-“

“Yes, yes, whatever,” she cut him off, half-automatic, mind whirring even as she tried to cut it off. She hadn’t met many humans before him, not at all. The ones she had, to her knowledge, hadn’t been anyone important, and besides, that had been-

Had been-

Nope, she told herself, very firmly, and cut off the track of her thoughts before it could go any further. Nope, nope, none of that. Stop. “Bloody Moon,” she muttered to herself, and shook her head. Aggressively, she went back to the topic of conversation that they’d sort of abandoned: “Anyway, Runaan found out that I’d made friends with someone who rates a bodyguard and then didn’t tell him about it, so now he’s going to lecture me. The longer I wait the longer the lecture will get, so.”

Callum appeared to consider this. “I can relate to that,” he concluded, in the end.

She eyed him, amused. “What, did you get told off for…” She thought about it, and guessed: “…not saying anything until Soren put a report in?”

Long-suffering, he sighed. “Yeah, pretty much.” He smiled ruefully at her. “Better let you get to that lecture, huh?”

“Probably for the best,” she agreed, her arcanum itching insistently at her. She ignored it.

With a few parting words, they dropped the call, and Rayla stared at her screen for a long while in silence afterwards. Better get it over with, she thought, determinedly ignoring all of the revelations she’d gleaned from that conversation, and went to get dressed. Runaan’s dressing-down would be easier to face if she wasn’t in a dressing-gown.

Predictably, he had a lot to say on the topic of good sense and security. Rayla sighed and suffered through it, agreed dutifully at relevant points, and then was finally released.

She had a lot to think about, but couldn’t think about any of it right now. Not without breaking trust. Rayla groaned, then grabbed her arrays textbook to scour her mind clear. If anything could get her head out of Callum’s nonsense, it was studying.

---

Training that evening was pretty calm, given they’d just had a game the previous day. Rayla received praise for her conduct, questioning regarding her contact with the other team, and then ended up reporting the few pertinent details she’d gleaned.

“Amata is being pushed to train as a counter to me, and has been for a while,” she offered, and “The other team wants to recruit me, but I told them no.”

“Well thank fuck for that,” said Legata, and then they were off into training again. It was all very standard. Rayla’s teammates went the usual full range from pretty decent to disappointing, and she thought longingly of Team Auriga and their consistent training and good unit cohesion and actual sense of motivation.

The only motivation here is me and Legata’s boots up their arses, she thought sourly. A few of the front-runners like Stavian and Lacrian weren’t too bad, but the rest? She wished she could break into their rooms and abduct them for training like Runaan had done to her whenever she got surly and tried to slack off. That’d shape them up in a hurry.

If only. She sighed and just did her best to push through.

Rayla returned home to find a pending contact request from Soren on her Sunbeam. She blinked at it, and upon accepting, was faced with a message unceremoniously asking when they were meeting up to spar tomorrow.

Oh, right. They had arranged that, hadn’t they? And then she’d forgotten to specify a place or time. Hastily, she went for the city’s system on the mageskein and had a look through the bookings until she found a decent training ground with an open slot.

One to three? She suggested, in the end, switching back to Sunbeam. He agreed, so she booked the field and sent him the location, and that was that.

I’m bringing Callum, just so you know, he told her, and then signed off. Rayla was left blinking at the screen, and wondering if he meant that Callum would be sparring, or just watching. She wondered, too, whether his old injuries made combat difficult for him. He’d worked hard for his mobility, that much was very clear, but did he suffer pains when moving quickly? Did it agitate his internal damage when he was hit? She didn’t know.

The next day proved her speculation moot.

“I’m just here to watch,” Callum clarified, arriving alongside Soren and planting himself at the edge of the training field with what looked like extremely long practice. Evidently, he was used to accompanying Soren to training. He had a few books with him, as though he were planning on doing some work while his bodyguard was busy. “And, you know, get passively guarded, I guess.”

Handily distracted, Rayla peered at him, then raised an eyebrow at Soren. “What is with your bodyguarding schedule, anyway? It seems…” She searched for a word. “Inconsistent.”

“Aren’t any active threats we need to worry about, and pretty much no one knows he’s here, so we don’t need to worry too much,” Soren replied easily, extracting a battered-looking airsheath from his pack and applying it to his sword with a familiar click. Belatedly, Rayla did the same; the things were expensive, so she only had personal airsheaths for her butterfly blades. She wouldn’t be able to use her throwing knives. “If people ever actually try to target him, they won’t be looking in Gullcrest.”

Rayla nodded slowly, glancing sidelong at Callum as she prepared her blades. “Where do people think you are, then?” She asked, directing it at him. “Are you…not well-known enough for it to not be noticed, that you’ve been gone for years?”

Soren snickered and Callum grimaced. “No, uh, that’d have definitely been noticed,” he said, looking a bit down in the mouth about it. “If I’d disappeared that long ago, I mean. No, er…” He looked uncomfortable.

“You might as well just say it, y’know,” Soren told him. “It’s not like she doesn’t know you’re important by this point.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be the voice of caution, here?” He grumbled back at him, then sighed. “I have a body double,” he relented in the end, glancing sheepishly at her. “He’s in an illusion to look and sound like me, and he’s attending college somewhere more…normal.”

Rayla absorbed that, blinking slowly. After the whole Head of the KBIS thing, it didn’t actually surprise her much that Callum was important enough to rate a body double. It made sense, honestly. It’d be weird for him to be able to hang out so flagrantly in Gullcrest with a pretty obvious bodyguard and his real name…unless everyone knew that the important Callum was off in some obvious human location, so obviously this couldn’t be him…

And that was a thought, wasn’t it.

She remembered what Ethari had said on their call, just a few days ago. He’d recognised the name Callum in the context of ‘important Katolian human’, and then commented something like…something about it being weird if it was him, because ‘he’ was ostensibly off at- “The something something Duren Art Academy?” She muttered, mostly to herself, but – it wasn’t hard to see the way that both Callum and Soren stiffened at that.

“Do you know?” Callum practically cried, half-standing from where he’d been quite comfortably settled in the grass. “I thought – you didn’t-“

“I don’t,” Rayla cut him off, and both humans watched her warily. “It’s just – something my guardian said, when he was worried about the background check. I told him your name, and he recognised it, but said it would be weird if it was you, because…” She waved her hand, as if inviting him to follow it up.

Shoulders slumping, and falling back to the ground, he did. “Because I’m supposedly studying at the Grand Duren Academy of the Arts,” Callum sighed, now a little rueful. “Well. I guess the cover works.”

“That’s kinda the point of it, yeah,” Soren agreed, but he still looked tense.

Rayla stared at him directly. “I’ve been actively avoiding looking up anything on him, or Katolis news, ever since I agreed to try not to figure out who he is,” she said, quashing her annoyance. It was sensible for him to be suspicious about something like this. “That hasn’t changed. I haven’t secretly known this whole time, or anything. I just – recognised that something Ethari said matched up with this.”

Soren observed her for a few more terse seconds, then slowly nodded. “Sorry,” he offered, and finally relaxed. “I can get touchy about…” He gestured vaguely, apparently not finding the words.

“The idea that a potential threat might’ve been running a long con?” Rayla offered dryly. “Don’t apologise. I think that’s just doing your job.”

Callum buried his face in his hands and groaned. “Can you maybe call home about this?” He asked Soren, despairingly. “It’s just stupid at this point. She could literally figure it out with a single skein search now. It’d take like, a second. What’s the point in waiting for the background check?”

“The point,” Rayla said, before Soren could, “Is knowing whether your people need to extract you for your safety or not. If my check comes back dodgy, they’ll want to put more security on you, or maybe make you leave Gullcrest completely. It’s not like you could just put on an illusion disguise and stick around, after all. I can see those.” She shook her head at his wide eyes. “Just think about it for a second, Callum. If I’m a dangerous actor – if I’m running a con here – I’m a huge threat to your safety. It doesn’t matter if you or Soren trust me. Your people need to do everything they can to clear me before they let you endanger yourself more.”

“But if you were running a con, you’d have known about me from the start, right? Why else would you be targeting me?” Callum reasoned, after a pause for thought. “There’s still no point in making me restrict your information until the check is done. Because either you’re lying and you knew all along, or you’re telling the truth and have good intentions. Right?”

She considered it. “I could’ve just stumbled on you by accident and then considered you a good mark, and sent word home to my potential dubious connections,” she pointed out. “In that context, I’d not have stopped myself from truthfinding your identity, but I also wouldn’t have known from the start. Still, you’re right about the information thing being mostly futile.”

“Mostly?” Callum repeated, with interest.

Rayla thought it through once, twice, and then a third time. She nodded. “Your security people know I could figure this out at any time,” she said, glancing at Soren, who was listening to this all with arms folded and eyebrow raised. “They’re pretty much asking me to wait until the background check is done. I doubt the identity information is the only thing that’s waiting on the background check, right? So, the point…” She shook her head and sighed. “It’s a show of good faith.”

Callum blinked. “…What?”

“They’re asking me to hold off on knowing,” Rayla assessed, and it made a little more sense the more she thought of it. “To wait for confirmation. Permission. It’s…a show of good faith on my part. And…” She frowned. “Trustworthiness? I can figure out important and sensitive information whenever I want. They need to know they can trust me not to, if I’m told to hold back.”

“They haven’t told you anything, though,” he pointed out, bewildered. “They told me.”

“And you think that wasn’t obvious to me?” She shook her head again. “No, that’s as good as telling me. If they know anything about truthfinders, even rumours, they’d know that.”

“Good information about truthfinders isn’t exactly easy to find, you know,” Soren pointed out, speaking for the first time in a while. Apparently he’d not guessed, or been informed of, the games his handlers were playing. “Are you sure they knew you’d know?”

Rayla thought about it, then felt about it. “…Yeah, I’m sure,” she said at last. “They’re testing me. I don’t know exactly why, but…”

But, she had some ideas. Judging by the look of him, Soren did too.

“I’ve been mostly holding back because I said I would,” she admitted, back at Callum this time. “I didn’t guess that your security people were testing me. But…I doubt your identity is the only politically sensitive thing you’re hiding-“ He flinched. “-so, they do need to know if they can trust me around you. It…makes sense.”

“Wouldn’t a lot of that be being able to trust you to keep secrets, not just…avoiding figuring them out?” Soren wondered.

“I’m a Moonshadow elf,” Rayla told him dryly. “Hiding things and keeping secrets comes naturally to us. Hence all the suspicion about me.”

“Yeah, fair enough.” Soren shrugged. “So I guess we’re still waiting for that background check. Anyway, basically we try not to leave Callum alone without someone who could back him up in a fight nearby, but we don’t…completely guard-guard him unless something weird’s going on, or there’s something in the news, or whatever.”

“Something in the news?” Rayla parroted, glancing at Callum.

He cleared his throat, and looked away. “Anti-human stuff,” he offered, succinctly. “Or…you know. Protests.” Something dark flickered across his eyes at that. A brief shadow of pain.

Rayla carefully did not interpret that. When Soren cast a sympathetic look over at Callum, she didn’t interpret that either. Instead she said “Fair enough,” and fixed Soren with a pointed stare. “So, are we actually going to train today, or…?”

Soren blinked, then grinned. “Yeah, we got a little side-tracked, huh,” he acknowledged, then hefted his sword. “I’m ready if you are.”

“…Not wearing full armour?”

“Nah. Too much of a pain to clean mud out of it.”

She nodded. “Rules?”

“To yield or bellatorium knockout?” He suggested.

They didn’t have lightfilms, but with only the two of them, they’d be perfectly capable of tracking what an incapacitating blow would be. “Works for me,” she agreed, and then they adjourned to separate ends of the training field to stretch and get ready.

Callum was watching with interest by the time they started their first bout, and whether or not he’d been intending to do some work with those books he’d brought, that trend continued through the whole of their allotted time in the field. Instead of studying, he just stared avidly, looking profoundly impressed every time she glanced over between matches.

In the end, Rayla won six to Soren’s three, and both of them were covered in bits of grass and smears of mud by the time they called it quits. Rayla pulled Soren up from the last one with a grin, and he mirrored it back at her. “We should do this again,” she said, without preamble. Her heart was still beating rapidly from exertion, the familiar pleasure of adrenaline and a well-fought match thrumming in her veins. She’d missed sparring with someone like this.

“Damn right we should,” he agreed, and rolled his shoulders. They clicked. “Maybe next time we shouldn’t train right before I’ve got Honour Games training, though.”

She blinked. “You have training now?”

“In a couple hours, but, yeah. It’s probably gonna hurt.” Despite the words, he seemed entirely unbothered.

Given she would’ve probably done the exact same, if need be, she could empathise. “Do some stretches,” she advised, then glanced over at Callum, appraising. “Are you going to training, too?” She did remember hearing that he tagged in to the team sometimes, as a Sky mage.

He’d still been staring. At being addressed, he flushed a little, and rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh. I might join in on some spell practice,” he admitted. “It’s been a while. And everyone has been trying to get me to train more lately…”

“Or always,” Soren reminded him, and walked over to pull him to his feet, books and all. “You know. Just pointing out that some of us have been trying to get you to train more always.”

He sighed, but didn’t respond.

Soren looked over at Rayla and lifted an eyebrow. It was half-way between daring and challenging. He looked like he was about to start making some really unsubtle nods in Callum’s direction, but she got the point plenty well before that.

Say something, he was basically imploring her. Motivate him. He’ll listen to you.

Rayla considered why Soren’s Honour Games team might be wanting to push for the participation of another mage recently and grinned. “Train up,” she advised Callum, looking him straight in the eye. “Next time I fight Team Auriga, I want to see you on the roster.”

His face coloured rapidly. “I don’t even play in the games!”

Soren snorted. “You totally do.”

“Twice!” Callum protested. “I’m not even that great as a battle-mage! I’d probably last like, a minute! You’d murder me as soon as the game started!” This last part, he directed at her.

She debated what she was going to do for all of a second, and before she could lose her nerve, strode up close to him. Prodded him in the chest, just where his scarf terminated. “Give it a try,” she invited, a fair bit closer to his face than was necessary. “I’d like to find out for myself how good a mage you are.”

“Um,” he squeaked, heart rate accelerating audibly. “Okay?”

Her lips twitched, just a little. “Okay,” she echoed, and withdrew. She tried to act casual about it as she went for her pack, like she was just coincidentally choosing right then to get her stuff and go. Instead of, you know, fleeing immediately after her first ever attempt at sort-of-flirting with someone. “I’ll let you two get on, then. If you’ve got training so soon…” She shrugged, faux-nonchalant.

Soren looked amused, but he nodded. “Sure. Catch you later?”

Blades stowed and bag over her shoulder, Rayla inclined her head. Cool and collected, was she. Not even slightly retreating. “Not if I catch you first,” was the automatic response to that, and she turned to leave.

“…See you tomorrow?” Callum offered then, and she nodded at him without ever pausing to consider the meaning behind it.

It was only later, back home, that she realised that she couldn’t remember any sort of agreement to hang out that Wednesday, nor any mention of a club meeting or sparring session that might bring them together. Finally, a little confused, Rayla checked her calendar.

Marked for tomorrow, the twenty-first of July, she had pencilled in a tiny furtive note.

Horn salon appointment. 4.30pm. Same ceracurist.

Rayla stared. She spent an extremely poignant moment realising exactly what that meant. And then she buried her face in her hands.

Oh no.

---

End chapter.

BABY’S FIRST FLIRT. Kind of! I hope you’re all proud of her.

Anyway I just want you to know that, because I love scars, The Callum Scars have been an ongoing major source of inspiration for this fic, such that when I finished chapter 7 and realised that the Scarring Reveal Scene would be next chapter I got so excited about it I couldn’t sleep and then I was too tired the next day to actually write it. Rip. But I got there eventually and I’m so very glad to share Callum’s exotic scarring with all of you. Plus all the other cool stuff this chapter. I’m generally just very excited about how many mystery and other plotlines got development in ch8.

Actually wrote all of this chapter in like November or something, but didn’t get around to publishing it until now because January hit like a very rude train. Comments appreciated, might help me keep my head in the game a lil.

Next chapter: we finally make the story earn its title again. Plus, you know, some other stuff.

Notes:

Truthfinding and death: Being Moon-aligned, the truthfinding ability is especially sensitive towards death, and will be stronger in circumstances where a death has occurred or nearly occurred. For a powerful and trained truthfinder like Rayla, seeing the scars of would-be-mortal wounds unexpectedly can trigger illusory sensations relevant to the wound. In some very specific circumstances, it could trigger considerably more than that.

Callum's scarring: It's safe to say that it's extensive, and runs across pretty much his entire body. The scars are thinnest and least severe towards his extremities, nearly absent on hands and feet and head, and worst towards centre of torso. That’s about all I’ll share for now though. You can bet there'll be more detail on the scars and their provenance in the future.

Throat wounds: It is possible to survive your throat being cut, even if the arteries are hit, but it’s strongly dependent on immediate medical care and a whole lot of luck. You’ll generally pass out from blood loss in seconds, and be dead in minutes if the bleeding isn’t staunched. And for suffocation reasons you can’t exactly tourniquet a neck like you would a limb. Since Callum had a lot of other blood loss going on at the time, he definitely wouldn’t have survived without very, very prompt magical healing.

Callum's body double: He's a professional hired for the job, has to be the same general height and build as Callum to make the disguise more error-proof but other than that the Moon-magic illusions take care of everything.

#tdp #tdp fic #tdp rayla #tdp callum #tdp soren #the ceracurist #ceracurist au #rayllum

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tenspontaneite · 2 years ago

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The Pava fandragon is complete I think

#flight rising #fandragon #disclaimer that flight rising is an online pet site game and this is not my art lmao #the ceracurist #i have made quite a few fandragons for my own ocs at this point and i regret it not at all #pava isnt even very important to the plot in Ceracurist but i love him very much anyway #gotta love a gay engineering twink with a healthy appreciation for the colour purple #also he's disabled and uses a wheelchair but aint any mobility aid apparel in flight rising yet so #just imagine it i guess

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coratatum · 2 years ago

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I'm amazed I saw this because I very rarely look at my notifications but

Since I got tagged, why the heck not!

Tagged by: @feuer-bluete

Last Song: Champion by Bishop Briggs

Last show/series: uhhh I sortof watched that Cyberpunk show over my husband's shoulder?

Currently watching: Critical Role! Campaign 3, live and all

Favorite color: purple! Like eggplant. Or a navy blue. Just blue and purple, can't go wrong.

Sweet, spicy, savory: S W E E T S

Currently reading: technically I've been reading chapter 24 of Peace is a Journey by @sleenonme for uhhhhh several months. :')

Or whatever the heck my bookclub throws at me next.

What I'm working on: what am I *not* working on? I'm making ttrpg dice, a discord bot, some coding project templates, eating more veggies and fruits, an AtLA fanfic I will never publish, researching recording and streaming software/equipment for potentially starting up a ttrpg stream channel.......

Currently obsessed with: Critical Role. Specifically Imodna, I love them so much aaaaaaaaa.

(Also Sponty's Ceracurist world. Also dice.)

Tagging other people: uh, whoever wants to do the thing I guess?

tagged by: @mollynoble thanking you <3

last song: Hercules | I can Go The Distance (currently have my disney playlist running)

last/show series: The Sandman!

currently watching: rewatching MASH

favorite color: dark red. #630000 - #380000

sweet, spicy or savory: all of the above

currently reading: finished a book with a very..... annoying end last week and therefore between books right now

what i'm working on: me working? nothing :D

currently obsessed with: not mouch honestly at the moment.

tagging a bunch of people because I haven't done one of these in a while: @whrainashland @sayabenz @midsummerdancer @hyperrasperry @devouredreaper @wanderingcub @hihosilverwings @kagenightray @coratatum @sunfoxen

#tag games #i cant believe I saw this lmao

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tenspontaneite · 10 months ago

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Not at all trying to be demanding or accusatory, but curious if you have plans to continue the Ceracurist!! I really enjoy the story thus far and I'd love to see more of it!

I absolutely plan to continue the Ceracurist, I'm very fond of it and it's possibly my most fun and low pressure fic. It might interest you to know that sometime last year I wrote a massive chunk of the fic approximately two weeks in the future of current Ceracurist events and it was enormous fun, and I definitely want that to see the light of day eventually

#asks #Ceracurist

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tenspontaneite · 1 year ago

Note

Hi!! I just wanted to say how much I absolutely adore your writing. I first found PIAJ and immediately fell in love. I am currently extremely obsessed with the ceracurist AU. Your world building and ability to keep everyone in character across every universe is so amazing 😭😭 ty for the awesome content I fr will never get tired of rereading your tdp fics. 🫶🫶

Also I forget where would I submit fanart for your fics? Is there a specific tag or should I just tag you in the post

Thank you very much \o/ I put a lot of work and heart into my writing and it's great when people enjoy it.

I am always delighted by fanart, feel free to just post and tag me 👀 I will be very thrilled to see

#asks #piaj asks #currently answering a load of backlog asks

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tenspontaneite · 2 years ago

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The Ceracurist (Chapter 7/?)

“Rayla,” Ethari started, slowly, after a long pause. “Have you…been mixed up in anything strange, recently?”

She eyed him warily. “…What?”

(Chapter length: 9.5k. Ao3 link.)

Chapter warnings: social drinking.

---

As instructed, Rayla called Ethari the next day – somewhat early in the morning, before he’d have started working – to report on how the party had gone. She expected it to be a pretty straightforward debriefing of the relevant facts, which is to say: she’d had fun, had socialised with people, and did not abort the mission early by turning invisible and escaping. She was looking forward to getting the whole met-another-truthfinder thing off her chest, actually, because what were the chances?

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite go that way.

Ethari seemed distracted when he answered the call, and for all that he said it wasn’t a bad time when she asked, a light frown remained on his face the whole time. His mind was plainly elsewhere. He listened to her report and nodded at the right times, but didn’t watch or question like he usually would have, and so she ended up trailing off awkwardly after not long at all. She stared at Ethari through the screen, knowing that, surely, he’d either tell her what had him so distracted, or just make his excuses and leave.

She wasn’t disappointed. “Rayla,” he started, slowly, after a long pause. Abruptly, she looked at him and understood, oh, this is about me. Her gut twisted with reflexive anxiety. “Have you…been mixed up in anything strange, recently?”

She eyed him warily. “…What?”

He shook his head. “I had a call yesterday – and then another one this morning, from your parents, and…well, I’m not going to mince words about it, Rayla, they were asking about you.”

Her stomach dropped. “Why? What’s wrong?” She demanded.

Ethari’s brow furrowed a little deeper. “I’m…honestly not sure. The call yesterday – that was from the Keeper of Records’ office, said they’d had a request sent in for your files and records. They denied it – it had all the right credentials, but they couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, and you know how they get about that.” He shook his head. “And then your parents called today to say they’d received a suspicious call asking about you, which of course they shut down. And then afterwards they were called by the Head of the Katolis Bureau of Information and Security, again, asking about you, and this time it came through with all the right authorisation and codes, and – Rayla, what in Xadia’s name have you been doing?”

Rayla, for her part, listened to all of this and then stared off into the middle-distance behind Ethari’s left ear. Her heart was beating a little too fast, a response to the automatic you’re in trouble feeling elicited by his words, but – but theoretically, she wasn’t in any trouble, right? She knew what this had to be. Surely, there was only one thing that could be responsible for this, but it was astonishing anyway.

…This is about Callum, she understood. And his brother. This is about whoever they are.

“Rayla?” Ethari pressed, when she didn’t answer. He sounded a little stressed, which…she could understand that. From his point of view, suddenly having all these suspicious people calling asking questions about her...

“…Background check, I think,” she said, slowly, once she’d run it over in her mind a few times. It was what felt right. But…the head of the KBIS? What the fuck.

“Well, yes, that was one of my first thoughts, from the information they were after, but – why?”

Why, indeed. Surely, no matter how important his family is, they don’t do background checks on everyone he makes friends with? She thought, and then reconsidered. Ran over several key facts about herself. Moonshadow elf, with largely unknown background, since I’m from a Hidden Grove. Stealth, infiltration, assassination training. Suddenly spending a lot of time with Callum...

It made a little more sense, thinking about it like that. Soren was probably responsible for prompting the inquest, and that made sense too. If she was bodyguarding someone, and he started spending a lot of time with someone who had the precise training and skillset to murder him or kidnap him or both, and that person had a background that made it hard to figure out if there was any motive for them to do that, and her protectee happened to be fairly obviously attracted to said person and therefore likelier to be vulnerable to them, and had had several weirdly coincidental meetings, and was a truthfinder capable of discerning potentially sensitive information and secrets and also security vulnerabilities, and was capable of seeing through illusions one might use to investigate them or monitor them in person…

Yeah, that was a lot of very good reasons for Callum’s security people to be concerned about her, honestly. If she was Callum’s bodyguard she’d have sent urgent reports home to the investigations people too.

Rayla deliberated on this for a good long while, perturbed, while Ethari started to look more and more agitated on the screen. He was subtle about it, but she knew his tells, and he was very bothered. Accordingly:

“Rayla,” he repeated again, tightly, when she didn’t answer.

She sighed, and an inkling of embarrassment finally started to push through her shock. “It’s nothing bad, honestly,” she assured him, which he didn’t seem to find especially comforting. “I just…”

“Yes, Rayla?” Ethari pressed, impatiently.

“I…may have accidentally made friends with someone important?” She tried.

Ethari stared, unimpressed. “Someone important,” he repeated, flatly.

“Someone important enough to rate an undercover bodyguard,” she admitted. “I was already pretty sure he had to be the son of some noble or general or admiral or something, but…Head of the KBIS? Bloody hell.”

Her father in all but blood regarded her with a very tight, pinched cast to his face. “This’d be one of the friends you were telling me about the other day, or…?”

“Yeah. The bodyguard is one of them, too.” She shook her head. “On top of that…there were nine guards at the party yesterday, all wearing full-invisibility illusions. Wouldn’t have been able to spot them if not for – you know.”

“I do know,” he agreed, then shook his head. “By the Light and Shadow, Rayla. You do know how to pick them, don’t you?”

“It’s not like I did it on purpose,” she complained, and finally he cracked a smile. “It’s just my luck that one of the first people I ever make friends with turns out to be someone important.”

Ethari sighed, and then something else seemed to occur to him. “The Katolis Bureau of – it’s the two humans, isn’t it. The person of interest and the bodyguard.” Her expression told him everything he needed to know, and – apparently – more besides. He took one look at her and groaned. “Oh – Rayla, it’s the one who fancies you who’s important, isn’t it? Of course it is.”

“That’s not my fault either!” She cried, offended.

“New Moon bleeding,” Ethari said, conversationally, as though it weren’t a curse at all. “And you don’t know who he is yet? He’s using a fake name, or…?”

“No, I don’t know who he is, and no, he’s not using a fake name,” Rayla admitted, now grumpy. “I could work it out if I tried, though. Who he is, or who his family is. But he asked me not to. And I asked The Security Question anyway and that was fine, so I’m being polite, and not just looking up a list of all the Katolian nobility and high-ranking military, but ugh. He really isn’t making it easy.”

His eyebrows lifted a little throughout her speech, and she’d barely bitten the last word off before she realised how emphatic and long-winded that had all been, and grew faintly embarrassed. “What was his name, again?” Ethari asked, thoughtfully. “Something surprisingly Draconic, wasn’t it?”

“Callum,” she supplied, and flushed a little. “It’s definitely not a fake name. He’s a terrible liar, I’d be able to tell.” She paused. “He has a younger brother who was at the party yesterday. He did use a fake name.”

“Callum,” Ethari repeated, very slowly, like a weird thought had occurred to him and his first reaction had been, bullshit. Then, plainly, he thought about it some more. And then… “Bloody Moon,” he muttered, almost beneath his breath, but she heard it plenty well anyway. “You really don’t keep up with politics much, do you, Rayla?”

She stared at him warily. “Not so much that I know all the names,” she said, suspicious. “Why? Do you recognise it?”

“I…might do. I don’t know how common a name it is for humans. But if the head of the bureau was calling…” He shook his head again, and for the first time, looked vaguely amused. “But you’ve agreed not to try to figure him out, haven’t you? Maybe I shouldn’t say anything.”

That was a very obvious Ethari-tease, that. She glared at him, and folded her arms.

“Mind you, it’d be surprising if it was, when all the news puts him as off studying at the Grand Duren Academy of the Arts,” Ethari allowed. “So maybe it’s not. Still…” He fixed her with a sudden, shrewd look. “What do you want to do about the information probes, Rayla?”

She blinked. “Er.” She thought about it. The background check coming through clear was probably going to be important to his ability to interact freely with her in the future, right? And, honestly, it wasn’t like she had anything shadier in her history than Runaan’s special forces background, anyway. Not that that would be in the files in the first place. “…Let them through,” she decided, eventually. “So long as they’re from the proper channels, I guess. And not asking for anything super invasive.”

“You sure?” He looked a little concerned. The Hidden Groves had strong opinions on privacy and information security, and it tended to rub off on even the easy-going sorts like him. “Is it worth the information? Being friends with him?”

She rolled her eyes. “Ethari, I want to join a high profile security detail someday, this isn’t going to be my last background check,” she said to him, exasperated. “And besides, I kind of got the idea from the bodyguard that he might know someone interested in hiring, so this could be a step in the right direction, anyway.”

He considered that. “Well. That’s a bright side to the situation, I suppose.”

“Plus, I can’t exactly blame them for getting twitchy about me, all told,” Rayla said, lips quirking. “I’m about as suspicious and concerning a person to make friends with someone’s isolated noble son as there could be. Aside from a known criminal or something, anyway.”

He huffed a laugh. “Well, that’s true enough.” A pause. “I’ll let the Keeper know. And your parents. They’ll want to push back a little to get more concrete proof of who’s asking, but…”

“This all not as horrifying as you thought, then?” Rayla asked, cheeky, and he sighed at her.

“I am much less worried about foreign special forces calling an abduction on you now, yes,” he said dryly, and Rayla was abruptly reminded of why, historically, known truthfinders had tended to keep to the well-protected heartlands of their kind. “I’ll cut this short now, if you don’t mind. Your parents must be going spare.”

“…And Runaan?”

“Out at work this weekend, and thank the stars for that,” Ethari said ruefully. “He’d be half-way to Gullcrest to knock down your door by now if he’d been here for the call last night. You know how he gets.”

“I do know how he gets,” Rayla agreed, relieved. “Make sure to mention the potential career opportunities thing to him, when you tell him about all this?”

“I will, for all the good it’ll do you.” His voice was amused. “Doubt you’ll get out of the lecture. But alright. Bye for now, Rayla. Enjoy the rest of your day.”

And with that, the call ended. Rayla was left staring at her screen, trying to process the last ten minutes of her life.

“Moon’s Dark,” she said aloud to her empty room, not even sure what to think.

She really should have expected a background check, in retrospect. Too, she should have expected that it would be noticed, what with the kind of sneaky and suspicious people she had for family – not to mention the notoriously paranoid municipal government of the Silvergrove. It had probably been overly optimistic of her to expect to keep the Callum-related nonsense out of her family’s notice, and in any case that was well and truly blown now, but she could’ve predicted most of this if she’d just been thinking.

The KBIS, though.

She stared at the wall for a long, long time, and couldn’t quite get past that one. She had plenty enough family background to know that, generally speaking, most background checks were carried out by private investigators hired by the interested party, who’d dig up information to the best of their ability and clearance, via variably legal channels and means. She’d have expected Callum’s family to go that route, once they became aware of her. She’d have expected the calls from home regarding the suspicious callers trying to get at her information. But…

If that really was the bloody head of the KBIS, and not someone just trying to pull a fast one…

Rayla exhaled, slowly.

So, he’s family of a high-ranking general or admiral, at absolute least. Maybe a colony governor. Not less than that. For the KBIS to be involved, Callum’s family had to be…security-of-the-kingdom-important, pretty much. There was no getting around that.

And this was who she had, in all her infinite wisdom, ended up having her first proper crush on.

Ethari’s right, she thought to herself, exasperated. I do bloody know how to pick them, don’t I.

---

She was naturally a little distracted at training that day.

Not so much that she didn’t pay attention to the briefing, though.

“Right, so we’ve a crossover game with the city team tomorrow, as you all know,” said Legata, as Rayla and the other thirteen members of the team crowded around. “We’ve had word from the bellatorium as to scenario – it’s a plain and standard battlefield game. Nice and simple, ten a side. Shouldn’t take much of the day, so they’ve scheduled us in for the afternoon. Questions before we talk tactics?”

“Any roster changes?” That was Orati, quick to ask.

“No roster changes, no new declared spells or specialities.” The captain shook her head, sending her outrageously long braid whipping side-to-side. “Their team should be as it was last time. But of course – if their mages do have any new spells ratified, they’re not obligated to make it public. So keep on your toes.”

“Their mages mostly suck anyway,” Terraya said confidently, fingering the pouch of little jagged rocks she used as the basis for her own spells. “We can handle ‘em.”

“I’m assuming you’re forgetting the last time you tangled with their captain, then,” Stavian said dryly, and she wilted. “Don’t underestimate Siranne either. I know she seems small and quiet and everything, but if you look at the records she’s responsible for nearly as many take-downs as Auriga.”

“Ugh, I know.” The Earthblood mage rolled her eyes. “I’m just saying – they really don’t have a lot of mages.”

“And we have too many. What else is new?” Legata sighed, then shot a glance around. “And on that note – how are we feeling about the Terrible Trio this week?” Silence. “Not exactly encouraged here, guys.”

“Happy to target them,” Rayla said staunchly, finally speaking up. “If you need me on that.”

The captain looked directly at her. “Mortasi and Teshan, sure. What about Soren? He was a problem, last time you two faced off.”

“Not a problem,” she insisted, setting her jaw. “Turns out he doesn’t actually have any way to see through my primal form after all. I’m good to go on that front.”

A light rustle went through the squad. “Well,” Legata said, pleased. “That’s certainly good news. All the same…” She paused, and thought about it. “We’ll try to get some opening hits on them, when the game starts,” she decided. “Stavian, Terraya, Orati – coordinate an opening strike, alright? You three can do some terrifying things together. Rayla – make sure to stay out of range ‘til they switch targets. We don’t want any friendly fire here.”

“Could try to target their ranged people at the start,” she suggested immediately. “That’ll get me out of the way.”

Legata nodded, and didn’t bother to ask if she’d be okay going behind ‘enemy lines’ like that. Rayla was very, very good at getting places the enemy didn’t want her. “Do it. Fiera, you try for the same. Do what you do best.”

The tiny wingborn mage grinned and cracked her knuckles. “I’ll be so annoying, you don’t even know,” she promised. “They won’t know what hit ‘em.”

“That’s what I like to hear. Now…” Legata ran her eyes over the assembled group. “Pacha, Barian, you’re in. Stavian, Septimus, Rayla, Fiera, Orati, Lacrian, all obviously in. Severai, Regius, Sarisa, Faveri, Jalia, Lucien – you’re out this time. Keep rested, and if anyone gets injured for non-game reasons, one of you can tag in. Any questions?”

Some of the named reserve elves didn’t look best pleased, but they didn’t protest. Bloody well train sometimes and maybe you won’t always be put in reserve, Rayla thought uncharitably, then shook the thought away.

“No? Alright then. Let’s do some practice. Remember: Don’t injure each other, don’t get too sore, don’t get too tired. Lightfilms on. We’ve got a game tomorrow, keep that in your skulls. Lacrian, I want to see how your barriers hold against Pacha. Rayla, take Barian and Septimus and rough them up a little. Barian, you’re playing Protect The Medic. Septimus, you’re playing Combat Medic With An Assassin In His Face. Have fun.” She waved them away and with relish, Rayla did as commanded. Behind them, Legata kept calling out exercises for the rest of the team.

It wasn’t at all uncommon, to be put in the role of beating up several of her teammates in the name of training. Legata knew full well how weak most of the squad was to melee and accordingly took pretty much every opportunity to put the fear of Rayla into them. This was probably not unrelated to why everyone found Rayla so intimidating, but she could live with that.

She put the airsheaths on her many blades with perhaps too much glee. “All ready?” She asked her assigned victims, once they’d relocated to a convenient barricade.

Barian activated his lightfilm and lifted his shield. Septimus…well, he just hunkered down behind cover, his own lightfilm glimmering softly in the air. Alright then. She lifted her swords and leapt straight over Barian’s inadequate shield.

They went ten rounds before Septimus confessed he was approaching magestrain, and Barian’s sword arm started to look a bit shaky. Rayla left them to recover and reported to Legata for further duty. “Still fresh?” She asked, direct.

“Fresh enough. Not tired yet, anyway,” Rayla answered, and got an approving nod from the captain.

“I wish I had five more like you,” Legata sighed, then glanced over the battlefield. “…Go chase Fiera down. You could use more practice at catching highly mobile targets.” She cleared her throat, then – in a fantastic example of how to project one’s voice without magic – yelled “FIERA! Incoming!”

The tiny lilac shape in the sky hovered for a second, startled. Rayla…well. Rayla went for her throwing knives.

It was a good time.

---

Callum sent her a message on Sunbeam that evening, but she was too buried in obscure truthfinding coursework to notice until she was about to go to bed. She hesitated, suddenly awash in the memory of the morning and left uncertain in its wake.

Thanks for coming to the party! The message said, innocuous and cheerful. Would’ve messaged you earlier but we were kinda cleaning up half the day. Plus, work. And then another: What’re you up to today? You and Soren have a game tomorrow, right?

Rayla hesitated at the keyboard. Finally, she conceded to respond. No problem. Just been training, honestly. And yeah, for the game. Her battered new Sunbeam module, true to Pava’s engineering, sent it on without any obvious connection lag at all. It was more than a little impressive.

She didn’t wait around for a response, though. After the morning…she was feeling maybe just a little weird about Callum, in a way she couldn’t quite untangle. Something about his identity, something about the security team behind him reaching their hands into her history…it felt strange, and left her skittish and hesitant in a way she didn’t quite have the energy to push past right now.

Besides. She did need to be well-rested for tomorrow. Better not risk a long conversation.

So she went to bed, slept well and without incident, and woke up to a message wishing her good luck in the game, and lamenting that he was working and couldn’t attend. I’ll try to come watch the next one, he’d said.

Rayla read it and reread it a few times, sent back a simple and inadequate thanks, and went to get ready.

The game wasn’t going to fight itself, after all.

---

Her teammates weren’t quite expecting the cheerful reception she had from the other team, when they were all milling into the vast central field of the bellatorium. “Rayla!” called Soren from the other side, looking as cocky and headstrong in his full heavy armour as he always did. “Ready to get your ass handed to you?”

She considered that, then made a very rude gesture across the field. A low, laughing chorus of ‘ooooh’ filtered back.

Those guys have such stupid good unit cohesion, she thought, half-annoyed and half-approving. She supposed them all actually being friends who regularly trained together outside of the bellatorium would do that. Her team, by contrast…

Legata had an eyebrow raised when she turned back. “They giving you trouble, Rayla?”

She snorted. “Nah. I just met a few of ‘em at a party the other day, so now they’re being…like that.”

Not a few of her teammates looked flabbergasted at this admission, as though ‘Rayla’ and ‘attending parties’ were not concepts that they had ever considered might align.

Legata was more practical about it, though. Rayla did like her. “Any actionable intel?”

“They’re basically useless against illusionists,” she said promptly. “No defences at all, pretty much, or none that they mentioned. Not that it’ll do anyone much good except me.”

“Something to keep in mind, I suppose.” She shook her head “Alright, everyone. Get your game faces on. Lightfilms on, airsheaths on. Mind your spells. You all know the drill.”

The bellatorium referee came by Team Auriga and Team Legata in turn, checking them all for activated lightfilms, checking every knife and blade and arrow for airsheaths, and confirming that Rayla’s own special illusionist’s lightfilm was functional. That done, they were all called to their respective sides of the battlefield, with some standard basic defences on each side – sandbags, wooden barriers, but nothing more exciting than that.

She eyed the opposing team evaluatively as they assembled, ears keen on their conversation. “Anything of interest?” Legata asked, lowly. She was plenty aware of how good Rayla’s hearing was.

“They want to counter me and Fiera first,” she said, listening. “Siranne is supposed to focus on shooting her down. They’ve got some strategy for trying to figure out where I am but they’re not saying what it is.”

“Of course.” The captain sighed. “Keep on your guard, alright? I’ll go warn Fiera.”

“Not changing plans?”

“Nah. They know your ears are good, they might just be fucking with us. Keep to what we discussed.”

And, as it happened, that did seem to be exactly what was going on. In those first chaotic seconds of battle, Fiera shot like an arrow into the sky, fingers already on her runes and a shout on her lips, and Rayla could hear Team Auriga’s cursing plenty clearly. So, they’d been trying to discourage their most mobile mage from her usual antics. Shame for them it hadn’t worked out; Fiera wasn’t a powerful mage but she was great at disrupting whatever the enemy tried to do. Sucked for them.

Wonder if they really do have a counter for me, she wondered, even as she pulled on the Moon and vanished from sight. Suppose I’ll find out.

“Amata!” Yelled the opposing team’s captain, as soon as Rayla was invisible and sprinting their way around the edges of the field.

“Right!” The enemy mage – an Earthblood elf – slammed her staff into the ground and shouted an incantation. Her teammates all stopped for a second as the ground rippled out from that point of impact, forming loose and unsteady ripples of dirt over much of that side of the field.

She knew what the point of it was, didn’t have to stop to consider it. They wanted to hinder her mobility, and make her footsteps more likely to show up in the dirt. Wasn’t as good as sand would’ve been, but Amata wasn’t that talented a mage.

Rayla completely ignored the displaced earth, leaping over the first few metres of it and landing light-footed on the top of one of their barricades. Their medic was taking cover behind it, tense, eyes darting around every-which-way. She went through a split-second of decisions – do I take him out now, taking out the medic is always good but this isn’t my assignment and I’ll lose the element of surprise – then leapt over his head and went for the nearest archer. Oho, it was Ligorus, too. She landed behind him and pulled him back by a hand over his throat onto the airsheathed tip of one sword.

If not for the sheaths, it would have been an outstandingly brutal motion, yanking him onto the sword as she stabbed it into him. He’d have been run through, straight through the left lung. As it was, he grunted out a strangled cry of pain at the bruising impact, and his lightfilm flashed bright red for a split second to indicate: incapacitating hit. A second later the red coalesced into the simulated points of damage at his back and chest, beginning to turn purple. Fatal unless stabilised.

She mimed kicking him off of her blade, and he fell heavily forwards to the ground. She heard “Vice-captain down!” shouted by the nearby medic, and for good measure, Rayla turned and chucked a knife at him. It got him in the shin, yellow flashing out, and he swore.

She didn’t waste any time getting out of there. Every melee fighter they had – even the Terrible Trio – was abruptly falling back to protect the medic, and she didn’t want any business of being stuck in the middle of that. In a few acrobatic flips and leaps, she was well to the side of the field again, out of range of both theirs and hers.

A quick survey of the battlefield – Siranne was actually targeting Fiera now, fuck – and she chose a new target. The medic, Soren and Teshan, and the crossbowelf she’d spoken to at the party were all clustering together. The medic of course had to simulate desperate attempts to save Ligorus’ life, and then treating his leg, and he needed cover in the meantime. The only people exposed-

Amata, she thought, and went for the mage.

It all went a bit pear-shaped, because apparently there was a strategy in place for dealing with her, and that was ‘Amata’, and also ‘Soren’, with a side helping of whoever else happened to be in range at the time. Amata, as it happened, had apparently been working on something that let her feel footsteps in magically displaced earth, and once Rayla got close enough-

By the time she’d taken Amata out with a very, very solid killing blow (lighting up purple across her throat in the lightfilm), Rayla had narrowly avoided being comprehensively stabbed on three separate occasions, and had taken a light ‘wound’ to the side of her neck in the process. Her team’s mages couldn’t attack Soren and Teshan and Mortasi from afar, because they were all very obviously clustered around Rayla. Which. Wasn’t the easiest of things to deal with.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. She opened her connection to the Moon so hard it nearly gave her magestrain on the spot. Truthfinding in combat had a way of backfiring, but if she didn’t, she was dead.

“Shit!” Teshan cursed, when Rayla finally managed to flip over his shoulder and get out of the extremely deadly corner they’d trapped her in. “I don’t have eyes on her. Mortasi? Soren?”

Unfortunately, the earth was still very much disturbed, whether or not Amata was around to feel it. A keen eye could spot the footprints she left. “There!” Mortasi shouted, and instantly leapt at her with both daggers outstretched. He was by far the closest to her match in agility on Team Auriga, but not nearly as strong, which was at least a small mercy. Rayla staggered back and, with several more truthfinding-inferences about where he’d attack next, managed to get clear again. “Fuck!” The elf cursed, wheeling around as though that would help him spot her any better. “Does anyone-“

Teshan got smart and started throwing vast sprays of dirt around using his shield. Unfortunately for him, it was a little too late: a clod hit her in the shoulder just as she ‘slit’ Mortasi’s throat, and as the other two reacted to the flash of purple, she struck Teshan with a vicious slash across the back of both legs. It was more than strong enough to ‘cut’ vital tendons. He had no ranged skills, so that was essentially him out of the game.

By that point, her magic was straining uncomfortably close to the point of failure, overwrought by far too much use, far too fast. Truthfinding and Moonshadow form combined…that was a lot. She grimaced, and finally retreated back to friendly lines. Terraya and Stavian were both red-filmed by the time she got there – incapacitated, probably by the enemy mages and remaining archer.

She dropped her magestate at Septimus’ side, and he jumped. “Took a shallow hit on my neck,” she told him tersely, and reached to the side to twist the band of her lightfilm. It went click, and the colours shimmered into place around her just as they were on everyone else. It had recorded the hit perfectly well even while invisible, and the yellow it had initially been was now edging closer to orange.

“Shit,” he said, and “Sit down, in cover. I got you. Lacrian?”

“On it,” said his current guard, and promptly cast his strongest wind dome spell. It was only up for a second before it deflected its first projectile, shot by an opportunistic archer on the other side.

For all that the wound was false, Septimus was obliged to behave as though it were real. Rayla felt the cool touch of the Sky magic in her flesh, easing the ache of the true bruise that was beginning to form there, easing the strained ligaments in her neck. After a short casting, he withdrew and slapped some bandages on her and then sent her back out.

All out of Moonshadow form, Rayla played much more carefully after that. She kept mobile, aware that the enemy was trying very hard to shoot her. Siranne finally managed to clip Fiera with a lightning spell, and Rayla was out in an instant to retrieve her, cutting one of their people’s horrible crossbow bolts out of the air. A second later, she took a vicious wind blast from Auriga, lightfilm going pale green all-over, and that wasn’t simulated – she was thrown metres back across the battlefield, Fiera thankfully still thrown over her shoulder, and retreated back to Septimus with a curse on her lips.

Fiera’s film was red; in terms of triage, Rayla wasn’t even a consideration right now. Pale green was fine. Pale green was you’ve been slowed down, and you’ll feel this in the morning. And, sure enough-

“Rayla!” That was Legata, terse and commanding. She went over at once. “I need you to take out Auriga or Soren, and I don’t give a damn which.” Rayla took one glance to see Barian scowling on the floor where he’d clearly been dragged into cover, virulent red emblazoned over the arm and chest of his film in the shape of a sword-slash. Ouch. No wonder Legata wanted Soren taken out.

Nearby, Pacha looked like he was starting to run out of steam as well, his formidable Heat-Being state almost at its limits. Aside from her, he was the only short-range fighter left on the team.

It didn’t even take a second to decide. “Auriga. If I go for Soren, she’ll bloody have me.”

“Good. We’ll give you suppressing fire. Go!”

Soren was abruptly too busy with all of their mages and archers to come for her throat when she ran past him, now visible for all to see and shoot at. Their spearelf, less so. Rayla succeeded in getting past his guard and delivering two orange-film hits to his hands, effectively disarming him, but by that time-

Fuck, she thought sourly, as all three remaining ranged attackers on Team Auriga focused fire on her. She evaded the wind-blast and the lightning strike, but was less lucky with the crossbow bolt. It impacted her left shoulder and bounced off of its own airsheath, but her shoulder flashed ruddy orange regardless. Scowling, Rayla dropped her left sword and let the arm hang limp; it was too ‘injured’ to use, now.

She fell back to ‘base’. There was no way she’d succeed in the planned assault on Auriga like this. “What happened to ‘suppressing fire’?” She muttered at Legata, ducking down beside Septimus to have her ‘bleeding’ staunched.

The captain had the grace to look regretful. “Auriga happened,” she said apologetically, and nodded to where Orati was now purpled out on the ground.

“Shit.” Orati was their only remaining long-range spellcaster. Legata had her insanely powerful enchanted greatbow, and Lacrian was great for close-range and defensive spells, but…

“Yeah,” Legata acknowledged. “They’ll be moving in on us soon. Septimus, get Rayla functional, we need her.”

True to her word, Team Auriga was now confident enough to send Auriga and Soren in, with Siranne and – whatever the crossbow elf was called – shooting at their enemies whenever they ducked out of cover.

“This one isn’t looking good,” Legata noted, glaring at the approaching heavy-hitters with ire. “Pasha? Lacrian? Think you’ve got enough in you for a good flashbang?”

“I can manage the ‘bang’,” Lacrian asserted, tense.

Pasha looked less sure. His magestate was gone now, and he had to be pretty drained. “I’ll do my best.”

“Then get ready. On my mark….” Rayla was urged to her feet, and lingered behind the barricade’s cover, her remaining sword sheathed for the moment. “Now!”

Pre-warned, Rayla closed her eyes and clapped her hands over her ears. Some five metres from their fortifications, both spells hit true, within a half-second of each other, producing a loud BOOM and searing flash of light at once. That was something they’d practiced, and though the actual severity of it was toned down as per bellatorium rules, it was still very shocking.

Auriga and Soren both cried out, and Rayla couldn’t ask for a better sign than that. Her sword was back out in a second; she darted in.

“Captain down!” Cried the crossbowelf – Vadrain? – from the enemy’s lines, as Rayla took advantage of her opponents’ disorientation to ‘stab’ Auriga through the armpit at just the right angle to reach her heart. She rolled to the side to avoid Soren’s reprisal, and then…

Of course, she thought ruefully, drawn into a bitter one-on-one melee with him. It just figured it would come down to this.

Lacrian threw up a heavy-duty wind-dome, just about large enough to cover Rayla and Soren as they fought. It would deflect Vadrain’s projectiles, but Siranne’s lightning was less of a certainty. She couldn’t spare any focus, though, not with Soren all up in her face. He was a skilled fighter, and she was down an arm and a sword. It wasn’t ideal. She did her best anyway.

Someone’s film flashed an orange just barely off from red; it took a second for Rayla to realise it was hers. A particularly nasty ‘stab’ through her side; would probably get a kidney if it were real. “Fucker,” she cursed, into Soren’s grinning face. And then – because as long as it wasn’t red she still had time – she dropped to the ground and pulled Soren down with her. He yelped in surprise.

As it turned out, his groundwork was shit. She grappled him onto his back using mostly just her legs and brute force, then went for his throat with the closest throwing knife in her bandolier. Purple flashed in the same instant as her side finally ticked over from orange to deep red, and both of them crumpled down in a heap. Whoever won now, it was out of their hands.

“Got you,” she muttered to him, deeply vindicated.

“Got you, too,” he said cheerfully, albeit in a whisper, because corpses weren’t supposed to talk and the referee might tell him off for it. “Mind letting me up now, though?”

“Oh. Fuck.” She disentangled him from her legs and then fell over ‘defeated’ at his side like a good incapacitated bellator. “There.”

“Thanks.”

‘Incapacitated’ and ‘dead’ though they were, nothing stopped them from rolling onto their backs and peering at the ongoing battle as closely as they could. No one came to rescue Rayla, because they were too busy trying not to get killed. Tragic.

Legata, Pacha, and Lacrian against Auriga, Siranne, and Vadrain did not sound like a hopeful match-up to her. And, true to expectation, Pacha got downed by a crossbow bolt, Legata shot said crossbowelf down but then took a lightning strike to the face for her troubles, and Lacrian managed to hunker down in a wind-dome for long enough to make feeble attempts at striking back, but…that didn’t last long, either. Septimus, no fool, promptly surrendered behind his barricade.

“Team Auriga wins!”

---

It wasn’t exactly unexpected for their ragtag university squad to lose against the considerably more dedicated city amateurs, so there was only the normal amount of grumbling as Legata said “Good job, everyone. We’ll go over the match and do a proper discussion at training tomorrow. For now, wash up and rest up.” With no real ill feeling, everyone peeled off their lightfilms and airsheaths, sat around cleaning mud from their weapons, and then headed for the showers.

It being a bellatorium in a Skywing city, there were very few modesty cubicles. Rayla claimed one in short order, emerged damp but considerably cleaner, and was promptly accosted on her way out of the locker room.

“Stabby Moonshadow Girl strikes again!” crowed Soren, arm slung around her shoulder. “That was some great stabbing, out there. Come on, I’ve told everyone you’re coming out with us now and they’re super excited.”

Rayla, who had only just suppressed her instinctive response to go for his throat, twitched. She’d somewhat forgotten about this in the clamour of the game, and now… “I don’t know,” she said, uncomfortable and a little grumpy. “You said drinks, right? Not sure that’s a good idea. I think I need to go home and eat a horse.” She considered it. “Maybe two horses.”

“I dunno about horses, but we’re going to a gastro-bar, there’s gonna be food, don’t you worry.”

“A what?”

“Gastro-pub!” Called one of his sharper-eared teammates from down the hall.

Soren didn’t even blink. “Yeah, that.” He withdrew his arm and patted her heavily on the shoulder. “Team tradition. We always get food after a game. And then drinks. C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

She hesitated.

“I’ll even pay,” he offered, and her resolve crumbled. She was, in the end, a student in on scholarship, and that didn’t exactly afford her a lot of spare spending money. She’d only been here a term, but already that most cardinal of student laws had been engraved in her bones: never pass up a free meal if you can help it.

“Oh, fine,” she grumbled, and allowed herself to be cheerfully marched down the hall.

The entire Auriga Team was assembled in the foyer, clutching duffel bags and weapons to their chests or slinging them over their backs. Rayla spotted several people whom she’d ‘killed’ today, as well as five reserves who hadn’t played at all. They all looked pleased to see her, and several even cheered. She stared, taken-aback.

“Don’t mind them, they’re just excited that Soren finally managed to get you to come out with us,” said Auriga, the captain, and the elf whose wind blast had knocked Rayla several metres across the field today. “Damn good show today. Rayla, right? Hope my spell didn’t get you too hard.”

She’d probably ache a bit in the morning, but. “No, I’m good,” she said, slowly, eyeing the assembled elves with consternation. “And…yeah. It’s Rayla.”

“I’m Auriga, but you probably already knew that given it’s all over the team name and all.” She reached out for a wrist-clasp, which Rayla automatically returned, then swivelled to yell at her troops “Alright, everyone! You know where we’re headed!”

A round of cheers went around the squad, and everyone promptly decamped for the doors. Rayla fell in line beside Soren and Auriga automatically, frowning at the size of the group ahead of them. “Do we have reservations…?”

“Oh yeah, don’t worry, they know to expect us on game Sundays,” Soren said with mirth, and waved over an approaching elf. “Ligorus, my man! How dead are you feeling?”

“Significantly less dead than I’d be feeling if airsheaths didn’t exist, that’s for sure,” said the vice-captain, whom Rayla had murdered very early in the game. He seemed in good spirits about his premature defeat though, and flashed a grin at Rayla as he drew up alongside them. He offered his wrist to clasp too. “Damn clean kill it was, too. Never saw it coming.”

By now starting to feel a little flustered, she clasped his wrist and shrugged. “…That was the idea.” She grimaced. “Should’ve gone for Siranne instead, honestly. Your arrows would’ve been much less of a pain to deal with in the late game.”

“Yeah, probably, your teammate’s got some damn solid wind domes,” Ligorus agreed as they recommenced walking. “Still, getting the VC out of the way is always a solid move, right? Wasn’t a bad shout.”

She sighed. “Suppose.”

The walk to the pub involved, more or less, more of the same. Chatter about the game, the various fights, the various take-downs…albeit in not much detail, because their destination apparently wasn’t all that far away. Rayla inspected the sign, painted with a bird and writing that declared it The White Gull, then followed the rest in. The interior was that paradoxical combination of expansive and cramped that seemed to define all large pubs, with a variety of different seating areas and little table cubicles and so on all arranged across an interconnected mess of rooms. But, as large as the floor space was, all the tables crowded in together made it seem considerably smaller.

Team Auriga went straight for the largest table to the back and right of the bar, the door to the pub’s kitchen set along one wall. Rayla was briefly distracted by the sounds of work and conversation through it, but followed along and dumped her kit in a pile in the corner with the rest. Soren pulled him to the head of the table with Auriga, Ligorus, and Vadrain, several other elves she recognised piling in at the nearest seats.

It all sort of turned into a chaotic mess of chatter and about five different concurrent conversations, after that. The dagger-wielding Skywing who nearly matched her speed leaned over the table to praise how decisively she’d killed him, eyes alight and interested, and demanded she come to sparring sometime, because he was sick and tired of not having anyone speedy and agile to fight. Ligorus agreed heartily and became the first of them to try to poach her when he asked “How opposed would you be to maybe betraying your team and joining us instead?”

“Ligorus! Have some bloody subtlety,” Auriga complained, elbowing him in the side. Looking at them, Rayla knew for a fact that they were actually romantically involved, and a stray glance across the table easily picked out the knowledge that an alarming number of these elves were all dating, banging, or otherwise involved with each other. Moon’s Light, she thought to herself, wondering what in Xadia’s name she’d been thinking, agreeing to come out to socialise with a group this thoroughly close-knit. “That is not how we ask a competitor to switch teams.”

“You were planning on it, though,” Rayla said, unable to help herself, looking at the captain and knowing it for truth.

“Well, yes, obviously we want to poach you,” Auriga agreed shamelessly. “We’d be stupid not to. But that doesn’t mean we should be blurting out offers when you hardly even know any of us yet. Here, look at a menu. What do you want to drink?”

Several jugs of water were already being delivered down the length of the table and being attacked by the team members; Rayla glanced at them, glanced back at Auriga, and inferred that she was being asked about alcohol. The drinks part of the outing, apparently, started early. “Uh,” she said, uncertain.

“Whatever you usually have, it’s fine, we’ll cover it,” Ligorus invited, looking entirely unbothered by his partner’s scolding.

Rayla debated lying. Then she sighed, and admitted “Honestly? I’ve never really had any alcohol that wasn’t moonshine. I don’t have a usual drink.”

“Oh, the Moonshadow hallucinogenic drinks?” Piped a familiar Earthblood face from down the table; the mage who had almost certainly been training specifically to counter Rayla.

“…Yeah, that,” Rayla agreed. Soren exchanged a glance with Ligorus, and they both nodded.

“We’ll just get you a nice pale ale and see what you think of it, how’s that?” Ligorus was already standing. Auriga waved another menu in her face. In short order she’d been presented with a pint and everyone was loudly debating the merits of various food items around the table. It was thoroughly chaotic.

Judging by the list, it was all hearty, filling, greasy-looking fare. Perfect after a hard-fought game, honestly. Rayla selected something with battered fish and a platter of honey-roasted vegetables and sent off her order with the rest of them, carried to the pub staff by a volunteer with a spare scrap of note-paper. She drank her pint and found it unappealing, but pretty unobjectionable compared to the vivid burn of moonshine. She reported her antipathy to Soren when asked and he went off to get something else. The second attempt: a pleasingly-fruity cider, the taste of alcohol in it almost masked by the flavours.

“Better,” she decreed, and got a congratulatory slap on the back for her troubles. She finished that drink at around the same time that the chaos of dinner descended upon them, plates brought out in twos and threes by the staff and then fallen upon by ravening bellators. Rayla could hardly judge; she demolished hers in much the same way, and got through another two bottles of the fruity cider by the time they were all done.

“Here, try this,” Ligorus said, planting a smaller glass in front of her and pouring something golden and sweet-smelling in from the bottle he held. “Old Vala’s Mead. I bought the bottle.”

The cider had been nice, but the mead swiftly became her favourite. Between snatches of conversation, the bottle poured out and the daylight followed.

“No, it really isn’t that big of a deal,” Rayla insisted, when asked about her Moonshadow form. “Sure it’s harder in the day, and when Moon’s not full, but that just means it – means I can’t do as long.” She frowned down at her glass, abruptly recognising the fuzzy cast of her thoughts. “…How strong is this stuff?”

“Like, medium strong,” Soren said, dismissively. “It’s whatever. But go back to your Moonshadow thing – I feel like it ran out pretty fast today? Is that because it’s not full moon, or what?”

“Oh.” She blinked. “No, that’s because you bastards had me surrounded and I had to start truthfinding in combat, which sucks. It sucks.” She lifted her glass accusatively at Mortasi, who grinned back. “But you didn’t exactly give me a bloody choice, did you.”

“Your fault for being such a big damn threat we all have to try to murder you at once,” Teshan said happily, having migrated from lower down on the table at some point in the evening. “What’s truthfinding when it’s at home, though?”

That flummoxed her, enough that she couldn’t quite find words to respond. “Bloody Sky, Teshan, how do you not know what a truthfinder is?” demanded someone down the table, and in short order, this turned into Rayla being asked to demonstrate the ability on them.

“Like, how?” Rayla asked, increasingly dizzy-brained. Soren helpfully refilled her glass with more mead. “It’s – pretty bloody invasive, y’know? You need to. Need to make sure you know what you’re asking me to know.” Did that make sense? She wasn’t sure that made sense.

“Who am I dating?” Shouted someone three seats down, the elf with the crossbow whose name she kept forgetting. Her brow furrowed, recalling her earlier unwilling insights about the relationship status of half the damn table.

“Uh,” Rayla said, and pointed. “Her. Him. And them. And – someone else who’s not here? I dunno.” This answer prompted a whole lot of cheers from that entire polycule, apparently.

It turned out truthfinding was a pretty popular party trick. She said “Your favourite colour’s blue, your armour is green because that’s what your – family member? Uncle or something? Whatever, someone in your family made it and your mum is guilting you into keeping it,” and she said “Something to do with – animal husbandry? Hunting? No, pest control, right,” and she said “I can’t tell you exactly what that means, I don’t speak the bloody language, but it’s something to do with airships or something, I don’t know,” and she said “Okay, that’s enough, you’re all going to bloody well give me magestrain.”

Later: “No, but seriously, do you think you can at least join us for training sometime?” Ligorus pleaded, leaning over the table. “You’ve got mad skills, and I want to train with you.”

Rayla considered it, then drank more mead. “Captain wouldn’t like it,” she said finally, and was fairly sure that this was true.

“Bah.”

“She’s going to train with me,” Soren declared, very smugly, and got more than a few envious glares for it.

“Sparring’s different,” Rayla defended, trying to muster the words to explain why. “It’s – if it’s at the bellatorium, with another team, that’s. That’s like. Betrayal? Disloyalty. Sparring’s just…hanging out with someone, right?”

“Is that how it is for Moonshadow elves?” The elf with the spear, one of several she’d disabled in the battle, asked with interest. “That’s how it is in a lot of Sunfire cities. To spar with someone, it is – friendly, yes? A good way to get to know someone.”

“Yeah?” Rayla offered, but waved her hand back and forth. “Kinda.”

“Okay then, will you spar with me if you won’t train with the team?” Ligorus was very persistent, wasn’t he.

She frowned at him. “No,” she decided, eventually.

His face fell. “Why not?”

Far more blunt than she’d have usually been, probably due to the sweet influence of the mead, Rayla said “What’s the bloody point? You’re an archer. You wouldn’t know a sword from your left arse-cheek.” Half the damn table crowed with delight at that, and Ligorus sulked.

“Cheer up, Liggy, she’s right and you know it,” Auriga said, patting him on the arm. “Maybe try out Magnus first, alright?” She turned to Rayla. “Seriously, though, you ever want to come to training with us, feel free. We’d not turn you away.”

“Mm,” Rayla said, now beginning to have a hard time formulating intelligent sentences. Soren glanced at her, evaluating, and the next time her glass ran empty he just passed her one of the water jugs instead.

“You’re not so used to drinking, right? Better stop here, probably,” he said easily. “Have some water. Dunno what moonshine hangovers are like but this’ll probably help a regular one.”

“Bloody terrible,” she muttered, of the hangovers, because those were some potent memories. She obligingly took the water, and drank through about three glasses before people finally started leaving the table. She blinked at them. “Where…’re they going?” She muttered at Soren, and he patted her on the shoulder.

“They’re going home. It’s kinda late.”

“Oh.” Rayla frowned, and for the first time in hours, groped at her Moon-sense. “Oh. Shit. It is late.”

“Where do you live, Rayla?” Auriga asked, looking annoyingly well-composed despite having imbibed an improbable amount of alcohol. “Is it far?”

“Uh. Student dorms?” She hazarded. “Eighth Wing.”

“Wow, really?” Soren frowned at her. “And you walked all the way back home after the party the other night?”

“Yeah, it did kind of take a while,” she allowed, abruptly not best pleased with the idea of confronting that walk again. “Ugh. What a pain.”

Auriga shared a look with Ligorus. “Want to crash on our floor?” Auriga offered. “We’re not too far off. We don’t have a spare room or anything but it’s got to be better than walking all the way back to the Edge district.”

Rayla frowned. Even drunk, she was not at all keen on the idea of bunking with strangers. She opened her mouth to turn them down, but was interrupted before she even managed to speak.

“Nah, screw that, she should come back with me,” Soren put in, and slung his arm over her shoulder. “She’s already been round ours like, twice already. Plus we’ve got, like, kinda a spare room, and the couch, and she knows everyone.”

“She has a name,” Rayla muttered, but consideringly.

“Stabby Moonshadow Girl,” agreed Soren, plainly taking the piss. She elbowed him in the ribs.

“Yeah, okay,” she decided finally. “At least I know the way back from there.” And, she thought to herself, too drunk to obfuscate even in her thoughts, maybe I’ll get to see Callum again.

“Great!” He stood, pushing his chair back. She went to follow, and felt considerably tipsier once she was standing up.

She swayed a little in place. “Bloody Moon,” she muttered to herself. “How far is Oakwing House from here?”

“Like, fifteen minutes?”

“Ugh,” Rayla said, abruptly more than ready to fall face-first into the closest soft surface and sleep. “Let’s get going then, I’m going to sleep for a week.”

Laden with their weapons and bellatorium gear, the walk passed in a timeless blur that felt considerably shorter than fifteen minutes, but also somehow three times as long. Soren opened the familiar door with a buzz of disarming security runes and waved her in. He staggered into the living room and tripped into the conversation pit, leaving her to close the door.

When she found him, he’d shuffled himself onto one of the broad sides of the sofa that lined the pit, and was already snoring. He had care for neither blanket nor the bed he had upstairs, and honestly, she empathised. She empathised very strongly.

Rayla considered it, then decided that he had pretty much the right idea. She collapsed face-first into the opposite stretch of sofa, and it was glorious, and everything was perfect, and she fell asleep instantly.

---

End chapter.

Happy season 4, everyone! This chapter was finished a good while before it hit, so as a note, my wind dome spell (originally created for piaj in 2019) significantly predates the breeze dome and I’ve decided to consider them separate spells with different utility.

I wrote 7/9k of this chapter in one day in a mad rush! It was a good time. The last story section brought to you by my nostalgia for aikido seminars and the inevitable large group meals in the pub afterwards. Also, I got the drunkest I’ve ever been in my life on mead, so.

Next chapter is a scene which, while only moderately important to only one of the mystery plotlines ongoing, has nonetheless excited me more than maybe any other singular scene in almost anything I’ve ever written, for the sole reason of….I like scars. That’s it. Very nuanced person, me. Anyway, upon finishing this chapter and realising that scene is next chapter, I got so excited I couldn’t sleep and then was, of course, too tired to write the scene I’d been so excited about. It do be like that.

Shout-out to the Mass Effect fanfiction The Spirit of Redemption, which inspired Kassa’s naming several years ago, and then upon this chapter for pain of having to conjure nearly thirty characters on the spot, I yoinked a couple more Latin-derived names from the story. (The names Ligorus and Auriga, specifically)

Character list in brief at the end. Many of these will recur, but none are particularly important. Feel free to forget all of the names.

Worldbuilding/etc:

Honour Games scenarios: the actual style, objectives, and win conditions of Games vary greatly, though they are limited to what can reasonably be done with teams of 15 people a side. For most Games, the scenario is determined by the management of the Bellatorium, but in professional Games there is considerable oversight. It is customary for teams to not know the Game scenario until a day in advance at most – with some interesting exceptions. Few scenarios call for the full 15 a team to be used; reserves are called in the event of sickness, non-Game related injury, or other circumstances preventing a teammate from playing.

Spells in Honour Games: Mage bellators must ratify spells – that is, register and demonstrate their safe use – before being permitted to use them in a game. The mage must demonstrate being able to consistently cast the spell in such a way that it won’t cause significant harm to a teammate or opponent. For example, you would have to demonstrate consistently casting fulminis weakly enough to not cause noteworthy harm to be allowed to use that spell in-game. Spells whose output cannot be controlled or that are always dangerous are not permitted.

Lightfilm: Magical item that projects a film of transparent light over a bellator’s body that reacts to hits from spells or objects, cleverly enough to determine approximate lethality of the hit based on force and location. They’re pretty damn expensive, especially the higher end ones that are capable of keeping traceable logs, or that report to Bellatorium officials in real-time to prevent cheating. Lightfilms are most commonly enchanted with Moon magic, but Sun magic films exist as well.

Illusionist lightfilms: Bellators who use illusions or illusion based abilities will be hindered by a normal lightfilm, whose projected film will show up even if they themselves are invisible, or can be used to identify the real bellator in a crowd of illusory fakes. An Illusionist lightfilm behaves the same as a usual one in terms of tracking damage, but will not project it until either intentionally activated or until the bellator takes a disabling hit. These are always Moon magic engineering.

Airsheaths: Anything pointy or with a cutting edge that is used by the bellator must be equipped with an airsheath, which essentially turns everything into a blunt weapon. Airsheaths are also applied to anything on a fortification that could potentially impale someone. The harder the impact, the more resistance the enchantment provides when it meets something, which helps prevent people getting actually stabbed, impaled, punctured, perforated, shot, or otherwise harmed. Airsheaths must also be applied to any fortifications used in a game that could conceivably impale someone. It is extremely against the rules to remove an airsheath from a weapon, unless said weapon is being used for non combat purposes such as climbing or installing pitons in walls.

Lightfilm colours: Pale to solid green – minor hit taken. Yellow – noteworthy hit taken. Orange – substantial hit taken, must see a medic if on a limb to have its use restored or to prevent ‘bleeding’ from worsening. Red – disabling hit, something substantial enough it would incapacitate the bellator; a knockout. Purple – lethal hit. These are more relevant in Games with certain win conditions, or that are scored on points. Airsheaths interact with lightfilms; any hit mediated by an airsheath will be registered as causing bleeding, and its colour will worsen until ‘healed’.

Characters:

Team Legata (university bellators): Legata, Stavian, Septimus, Pacha, Barian, Fiera, Lacrian, Terraya, Orati, Sarisa, Faveri, Jalia, Regius, Severai, and obviously Rayla.

Team Auriga (city amateur bellators): Auriga, Ligorus, Sorvai, Teshan, Mortasi, Aemilius, Amata, Siranne, Vadrain, Magnus, Suasi, Fortuna, Cirrus, Columba, and obviously Soren.

#tdp #tdp fic #rayllum #tdp rayla #tdp soren #the ceracurist #ceracurist au

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konmaao3 · 2 years ago

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There are so many! I don’t have the time to read as much as I want, but here are some recommendations in ascending order of pain I felt while reading (even though there are no bad endings, “just” angst and pining):

i fell in love with you one night in september

The Ceracurist

And they were Zoom-mates...

Downtime in Wartime + Upside Downtime

Cottage Cuddles AU

Someone Like You

Also, @gagaball88 has this document full of Rayllum recommendations.

Hi friends pls recommend callum x rayla fics bc apparently im more obsessed with them than i remember

7 notes · View notes

tenspontaneite · 2 years ago

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The Ceracurist (Chapter 5/?)

“Truthfinding prompts?” She read aloud, disbelievingly enough that half the room turned her way, distracted from their cards. “There’s truthfinding in this game?”

Callum blinked at her, politely confused. “What, didn’t you know?”

(Chapter length: 8.5k. Ao3 link)

Warnings: Blood and severe injury described in a video game.

---

Dinner was presented on the large table in the kitchen, freshly cleared of clutter and loaded up with plates and two large pots of curry; one sort of yellow in colour, the other a surprisingly virulent purple. The entire crowd of Kassa, Nihatasi, Callum, Soren, Pava, Kazi, and the new elf Venanin squashed themselves around the table with what seemed like practiced ease; she thought they had to be used to hosting a lot of people, by the way they behaved, and the number of folding chairs they had sitting around.

Rayla, for her part, had been saved a seat by Callum. Beside him. Because of course. She took it, thanked him, and resolutely avoided thinking about any recent revelations as she investigated the food.

She was given a plate, a large flatbread and some rice, then invited to spoon herself some curry. She tried some of each, and both proved to be delicious. Rayla stayed mostly quiet at the table, listening to the conversation passing around, still quite aware that she was the outsider here. There was such an obvious breadth of familiarity among these people that, however welcome they made her feel, she couldn’t help but withdraw.

They made efforts to include her, though; that was plenty obvious. Nihatasi and Callum in particular – the former remaining overwhelmingly delighted to make friends with new people, and the latter…well. He was very aware of her. And interested in her. That wasn’t exactly hard to notice.

By the end of the meal she’d disclosed some opinions on the purple curry, Antiquitora, Gullcrest at large, the house gryphon, and whatever else they prompted her about. She’d also discovered that Soren was the friend Callum had mentioned being on the same course as her, albeit a year ahead, which was yet another bizarre coincidence. He was doing it part-time, apparently, for…some not particularly clear reason. When she asked, he just shrugged, said “I’m a busy guy,” and left it at that.

Afterwards the dishes were all piled half in the enormous sink and half on the side, apparently to be dealt with later. “What are we all playing when Rayla’s on the computer?” Kassa asked the group at large, pausing by a cupboard outside the kitchen, and some speculative looks went around. “And no Antiquitora, Kazi, that takes way too long.”

“I might just watch whatever Rayla’s playing,” Callum volunteered, and Nihatasi looked torn.

“I kind of want to do that too,” she said, conflicted. “But I also kind of want to try out the new Three Phoenix deck with the weird feather cards. Soren, you’ll play that, right? You like card games.”

Soren confirmed that he did, in fact, like card games, and Kassa extracted the relevant deck from the cupboard. Venanin left after politely washing a couple of plates, apparently having only dropped by to tinker with Pava and have some food, and everyone else proceeded upstairs to Callum’s expansive room. He had to move a couple of easels out of the way, and after that left everyone to their devices, eagerly leading her over to a large chest full of modules. “Pick whatever you like,” he invited, as pleased as if he were the one getting to game properly for the first time in years. “There’s spare memory chips too, they’re sort of cluttered around the bottom.”

Rayla looked over the names embossed on the module casings, excitement stirring in her chest. She’d not quite managed to muster anticipation for gaming over all the social awkwardness before, but now, she was looking at all these game titles, and – just- “This is a great collection,” she said happily, moving some out of the way to peer at others, and extracting a memory chip once she uncovered one. “You have a lot.”

Callum preened, kneeling beside her as she rummaged through. “A bunch are still at the society room,” he claimed. “But those are mostly the older ones that’ll work okay on the computer there. This should be everything recent.”

Her fingers hovered wistfully over a number of games she’d been wanting to play for years, indecisive. But in the end, there was one that was pretty new, that she’d been wanting to play, and that she’d even been talking about recently. So she picked out the hefty Scion of Shadow module, waved it at Callum, and said “This okay?”

“Great choice!” Nihatasi called from within the midst of the incipient card game, sitting around in a circle on the floor with the rest. She’d apparently been craning her neck to watch, and her keen Skywing eyes were more than equal to the task of picking out the name.

“It’s a really good one,” Callum agreed, delighted, and took the module from her. “It’ll be really cool to see what you think of it, since you’re actually, you know, a stealthy-type Moonshadow elf and everything.”

“I’ve heard good things,” Rayla said, unable to hold back a grin, and followed him to the computer. He plugged the module’s various cables in, four separate wires clicking into place, and it started to whir. She handed over the memory chip when prompted, which he slotted in, and then was waved into the chair in front of the monitor. Callum sat down in the second chair from further down the desk, shuffling over to watch. He was sitting close enough for their elbows to brush. Rayla did her best not to pay attention to that, and instead occupied herself with – very excitedly – finally starting up the game.

“Remember to change the settings,” Callum advised, while the screen was playing its loading animation: a magical forest at night, with an unfamiliar lunar Circle glittering in sharp lines within the undergrowth. “I think Pava was the last person who played it, so it’s set for Sunfire eyes at the moment.”

“Oh.” Rayla grinned at the reminder. She’d never played a game sophisticated enough to have race-based graphical settings. And, in something like this…it would matter. It was a stealth game, after all. A stealth game with a Moonshadow protagonist. “It’s built around the idea that you should be able to see well in the dark, right? So it turns up the light levels if you’ve got worse dark-vision?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, shuffling the spare chair closer so he could inspect the screen. “Most of the rest of us have pretty similar night-vision. I mean, Nisi and Kassa have sharper eyes, and can see a lot further, so it’s weird to watch them play this, because it all looks way blurrier in the distance for me, but their eyes aren’t any better in the dark than me or Pava’s or Kazi’s. So.”

“You’re probably hardly going to be able to see anything in mine,” Rayla observed, with a little mirth. The lightless night-time scenes would probably be nearly opaque darkness for him, if it was set to realistic light levels.

He laughed. “Yeah, I guess so. Good thing I’ve seen this played enough I’ll probably be able to tell what’s going on anyway.”

Finally the game finished loading, and brought up its main menu. It had registered the memory chip she’d pushed in, showing no extant game data. She nodded, suppressing the urge to squirm with anticipation, and went for the settings menu. It had been so long since she’d had a chance to play a proper game like this. She’d spent her entire childhood longing for it. It made her feel delightfully young and fresh and excited to be sitting at the Scion of Shadow menu screen now.

She let her eyes run over the options, moving to change the player-race settings to MOONSHADOW ELF, then looking over the rest of it. Difficulty level…normal, she supposed. “You can change that mid-game, if you have a hard time,” Callum offered helpfully, and she nodded absent-mindedly, still reading through the user interface options, the sound options, the – the – what?

“Truthfinding prompts?” She read aloud, disbelievingly enough that half the room turned her way, distracted from their cards. “There’s truthfinding in this game?”

Callum blinked at her, politely confused. “What, didn’t you know?”

“I never heard that.” Her head was reeling, all of a sudden. “So, what, the protagonist is a truthfinder, or….?”

“She gets the ability when she becomes the Vessel of Moon at the start,” Callum offered, eyeing her with interest. “Part of the whole Scion thing, you know.”

“I didn’t know that.” Rayla stared at the text, Truthfinding Prompts, then inspected its options. Prevalent, normal, scarce, and disabled. ‘Normal’ was the default. Hm. “How accurate is it? I mean – how do they do it?”

Gaining some interest in the conversation, Kassa turned their way, Nihatasi observing inquisitively from beside her. “Isora’s truthfinding starts pretty developed and gets better a lot faster than a real truthfinder would,” she said, shrugging a wing. “Or, you know, so the game says. It’s not exactly easy to find information on how real truthfinding works. I think they interrogated a few priests or something, but who knows if it’s accurate or not.”

“I mean, that sounds about right,” Rayla said, still staring at the screen. “So – this setting here, can you change that during the game, too?”

“Yes?” Callum was eyeing her appraisingly now, plainly aware that something about this had gotten to her. “You can change it anytime.”

“And the truthfinding comes in early?”

“Right at the start, basically. It’s a key game mechanic. A lot of the plot is built on it.”

A stealth game with a Moonshadow truthfinder protagonist. Rayla couldn’t help but grin, even though she had no idea how good the handling of the truthfinding would be yet. She’d heard good things about the stealth mechanics, at least, so… “I can’t wait,” she said, with true anticipation, and saved the options. Without further ado, she began the game.

The opening cutscene and intro section Rayla had seen before, in videos on the mageskein. It was still exciting to be playing it herself, but it was all familiar territory. Predictably enough, Callum made comments about how insanely dark the game looked on her settings, which garnered enough interest from the rest of the room that Nihatasi abandoned her girlfriend and her deck to watch, and the card game migrated to a closer section of floor so that everyone could see for themselves.

“It’s really something else to see it like that,” Kazi mentioned, looking at the screen as Rayla moved Isora through the tutorial. “After playing on Sunfire settings, and being able to see everything in the dark…”

“I can only see anything around the moon-moths. And even then, only a tiny bit,” Callum agreed, watching.

Rayla reached the end of the tutorial, and shortly afterwards, the climactic cutscene in which Isora unwittingly interrupted the Moon’s Blood ritual and was transformed permanently into a Moonshadowed state. And after that…

There were little silver traceries of light in various parts of the screen. The tutorial pop-up said: Truthfinding allows you to learn things and figure out what to do on very little information. Search for clues to find out what to do next.

“So that’s how they handle the truthfinding?” Rayla asked, appraisingly, looking at the screen. “It points out all the clues for you?”

“Sort of. It’ll give you information pop-ups based on what you find – they get more accurate the higher your truthfinding skill is, and the more clues you get.” Callum squinted at the screen, as though trying to spot the shapes in the dark. “If you don’t look hard enough, you can end up doing the wrong stuff, and losing the game.”

Rayla nodded, just a little, and went to investigate the first marked ‘clue’. It brought it up in exquisite detail: a plant, broken in a very specific way, with a strange residue on one leaf. There was an ‘inspect’ ability that she activated, and it gave her a text box: A trampled shrub. There is an oily residue on it that smells familiar from the ritual leader.

After that was gone, a text box with glowing silver lettering appeared instead: The smell is the same as the leader of the Moon’s Blood ritual. Perhaps he came through here. You aren’t certain if this residue leaking here means he’s injured or not.

“So, that’s a truthfinding inference,” Callum pointed at it. “All of this stuff gets added to the truthfinding menu so you can read it back. And once you get enough clues they’ll combine to give you a better picture of what’s going on.”

Rayla nodded, thoughtfully, and kept on. She went for a few more clues – footprints, witch-oil splatters, claw marks in trees – and inspected each one in turn to see how the game handled it. When the notification came for a ‘truthfinding synergy’, she closed her eyes for a moment to pull on her own. With that information…what would she conclude?

It ached, a little, but it came easily enough. Rayla opened the menu to see what it said, and smiled. “What happens when your truthfinding skill increases?” she asked, thoughtfully.

“You can figure out more from less, and make Intuition Leaps. They get pretty wild in the late game, actually, I have no idea if that’s accurate to what real truthfinders can do or not, but she is supposed to be a super-charged magical Scion, so…” Callum shrugged, then blinked curiously as she brought up the game menu. “What are you doing?”

“Changing some settings,” Rayla answered, cheerful, and disabled the truthfinding prompts entirely.

“Er,” he said, a little worriedly, and the others started to look over again. “Are you…sure about that?”

“What did she do?” Nihatasi asked, craning her neck. As Rayla closed the menu, and saw absolutely none of the little silvery markers anymore, the little nomad’s eyebrows shot up. “You turned off truthfinding prompts?”

“You know that disables the inferences and synergies too, right?” Callum questioned, somewhat anxiously, as she set Isora to stalking around looking for clues – unaided by the game mechanics, this time. “It’s supposed to be a challenge mode for experienced players. It won’t give you the information. You won’t know what you’re doing.”

Rayla grinned, said nothing, and started using Inspect on pretty much everything inspectable. Kassa abandoned the card game, claiming that Rayla was obviously ‘up to something’; steadily, the rest of the card-playing group all pretty much stopped what they were doing to watch as well.

“Wait,” Soren said, squinting at the screen. “I…don’t really do games, but I’ve seen you all play this enough times…isn’t that the way to-?”

Nihatasi shushed him, scandalised. “Soren, that’s spoilers.”

“I’m pretty sure she already knows she’s going somewhere important, look at her.” He waved at the screen, as though to indicate Rayla’s very sure pathing through the gnarled forest.

“Have you watched a lot of videos, or something?” Callum asked, baffled, as Rayla-as-Isora found and followed a trail to a moonlit path glittering with ghostly, evanescent liquid. It didn’t take a truthfinder to follow that.

“Nope,” Rayla said, grinning, pulse thrumming with excitement. The liquid was weird and glowing, maybe, but it was pooled and splattered like blood from profuse wounds. She looked at it and saw that something had left a blood trail. Something very large, and very close. “Now shh, I think I’m about to find something.”

Callum groaned despairingly, watching the screen. This area was bright enough that he could probably see what was going on. “Are you sure you don’t want to turn the prompts back on? Just for this?”

She shrugged, said “Let’s find out,” and walked straight into a major game encounter.

In the moonlit clearing was an enormous lunar archdragon, and she was dying. She was sprawled across the ground and broken trees, sides heaving with the effort of breathing, ghostly blood pouring from her in bursts with every movement. She was glowing, but in a flickering, weakening sort of way. Her blood and shape seemed almost to be steaming at the edges. Her nostrils flared, and with effort her great head rose to swivel at Isora; her eyes were gone, leaving sunken bleeding pits, but she hissed anyway.

“It is you, is it?” she rasped, light flaring around her, whiskers lifting with fury. “Thief! Breaker of eggs, stealer of souls, bane of every shifting light. How dare you come here?”

Isora couldn’t be moved, now; instead, a text box opened. But…Rayla blinked, surprised…instead of pre-written dialogue, or dialogue options, there was a Choose what to say field. She clicked on it, wary, and found an elaborate system where she could, apparently, select a sentence structure and populate it with some key words from a list. “What’s this about?” she wondered, and got a slew of pitying looks from her observers.

“You’re supposed to use truthfinding to help figure out what to say,” Nihatasi said, drawing closer to watch over her shoulder. “But Isora’s truthfinding isn’t very high level at this stage of the game, so it’s hard to get through this encounter right even when you do have the prompts enabled. This dragon is…tricky. Most people just skip her if they can.”

Rayla frowned, scrolling through the options, considering what she knew. The Moon’s Blood ritual had been intended to make the cult leader into the Moon’s Vessel, and accordingly transform them into a Scion. Isora had just stumbled into it at the wrong – or right – time. But the ritual had featured a pool of gleaming blood quite prominently. Blood that looked a great deal like this.

She thought for a moment and then consciously opened her magic, tapping into the truthfinding as deeply as she did when doing her coursework. The ache made her wish she hadn’t worn herself out on purpose earlier, but, well. At least it still worked as well as ever. It rose to the surface and brimmed around her thoughts as she looked through the options.

Carefully, she shaped her guess into the most compatible of the sample structures available. The wording was a bit clumsy. She hoped the game was programmed well enough to interpret it right. “I didn’t steal anything from choice,” she made Isora say, and wondered how many thousands of lines of dialogue they’d had to have the voice actress record for this.

There was a brief pause and a loud hum from the game module, presumably as it interpreted and selected the response. The dragon’s mouth opened, revealing gleaming needle-sharp teeth; blood spilled from around them as she snarled. She didn’t speak. “Oh boy,” said Pava, sympathetically. Apparently it was a bad response, then.

Rayla pursed her lips as the text selection returned. She was able to choose more than one sentence this time, and she thought about it, hard. She thought of using one of them to claim it had been an accident, but…looked at the dragon, winced, and decided against it. The previous denial hadn’t gone well; she had the inkling that trying more of it would worsen the situation. She thought about it for a long while, and then slowly started piecing the lines together, feeding the clues she’d gathered in.

“It was dragon blood in the ritual,” said Isora to the dragon, in the first sentence. “It was them that hurt you,” as the second. “What else did they steal? There has to be more to it than blood.” Third and fourth. That was the limit. Rayla watched for the response, her collective of new friends going confusedly silent around her.

After another loading pause, the dragon’s head reared back, as though she’d been startled. She coughed blood, hissed, then turned her head as though trying to look at Isora out of an eye that was no longer there. “The thief asks what she stole,” said the dragon, though ponderously this time. “But it is all over you. The stink of it, the feel of it. I am empty inside, thief, and it is because of you. Is it not?”

“Wait, what?” Callum asked, taken-aback, and someone shushed him.

Rayla thought hard, arcanum twinging at her from overstrain as she slowly selected the response. “I interrupted the ritual, and this was done to me. The backlash destroyed the mountain.”

The dragon was silent for most of the programmed response, playing an animation of gushing blood and laboured breath. “Come closer, little thief,” she said eventually. “If you dare.”

There wasn’t a dialogue selection there, just an action prompt. Approach: yes or no. Rayla selected ‘yes’ without hesitating. As Isora neared the huge dragon, feet wading through ghostly blood, the great beast lowered her head and inhaled slowly, teeth gleaming by her face.

“…There is none of the stink of that witch-oil here,” she said at last. “It was not you.”

“I’m not one of them,” confirmed Isora.

Slowly, ponderously, the dragon sighed out on a bubbly breath, and her whiskers drooped low, as though suddenly lacking the energy to move. “What, then, has become of them?”

Via Isora, Rayla drew on all the clues she found and said “I don’t know. At least a few of them died. I think the leader escaped.”

The dragon closed her ragged, ruined eyelids. “I see. I had thought to curse you, when you came here shining with stolen light. I have enough left in me for that. But…it was not you. It would not help.” She lowered herself slowly down to the sodden ground. “I am very tired.”

“You’re dying,” said Rayla-by-Isora.

“Yes. But it is some comfort to die knowing that at least they did not succeed.” The dragon laughed, painful and wet. “You are still a thief, but you stole what they had already stolen. It is good, I think. Fitting.”

“I have never seen this dialogue tree before,” hissed Pava, incredulous, only to be shushed by three different people.

Rayla considered her options, then opted for an introduction. “I’m Isora,” her character said. “Who are you? Is there anyone you’d like me to take a message to?”

The dragon laughed again, more quietly. “I was Penumbra,” she said. “I had a mate. They bled him dry and stole his eyes. I had a daughter, only a year from the egg. They bled her too, and took the very heart and the soul from her. I am almost glad that my eyes were stolen too, so that I did not have to watch it happen. No, little thief-Isora, there is no one to bring my death-words to. None that still live.”

Rayla winced. “That’s dark,” she observed, appreciating for the first time why the game was warned as not for children. To the dragon, her character responded “I’m sorry.”

“It was not your doing. I am glad, if nothing else, that they did not manage to keep what they stole. You are a shining thing now, bright in the Moon, brighter than anything I have ever seen – I should have hated for our suffering to make one of those monsters so bright as that.” Penumbra’s empty, sightless eyes opened, ‘looking’ straight at her. “I am dying. Revenge is beyond me now, so I will ask it: will you kill them for me? Those that survived, those that escaped…will you hunt them? Will you slay them? Will you spill their blood for what they have done?”

A prompt appeared: Accept quest?

“Yes,” said Rayla, via Isora. “I’ll take revenge for you.”

“Good,” sighed the dragon, and reached out a diaphanous wing to pull Isora close in to her bloody chest. “Let this be the price for the light you now bear. A creature of the Moon are you, keener than its light and darker than its deepest shadows. So long as you avenge us, you may bear that power without shame.”

Then, coiled around the protagonist, the dragon flared into light. The blood glowed in its fetid pools, the wings glowed, the long body and its long tail – all turned to light. The screen whited out, and final whispery dialogue played out:

“Blood for blood, Isora, and you will fulfil your oath. It is only right.”

When the scene returned, the clearing was empty. The blood and the dragon were gone, and Isora had a strange, twisting glowing mark on the back of her arm. She held it up to see it shine.

Quest log updated, said a notification, and then Penumbra’s Blessing added, and then Achievement unlocked: Blood Diplomacy.

With that, the cutscene ended, and Rayla regained control. “This,” she decided, grinning, “is a really cool game.” When no one replied, she turned and saw everyone staring at her, in varying states of visible astonishment. “…What?”

“Blessing?” Callum squeaked finally, waving his hand weakly at the screen. “You got the Blessing? Without a guide? On your first run?”

“I’ve only seen that in people’s ‘unlock all secret dialogue’ runs,” Kassa said, sounding reluctantly impressed. “Did you read a guide before you played? Or watch videos?”

Rayla shrugged, checked the time, and then reluctantly saved the game. It had probably been enough for the day, especially with how overworked her arcanum already was. “Didn’t need to. Game’s well made.”

Nihatasi looked flummoxed. “Seriously though, it’s really hard to get through that encounter without her just cursing you after two sentences. How…?”

She shrugged again. “Call it Moonshadow intuition?” She didn’t quite like advertising her truthfinding, really, and wasn’t keen on the idea of announcing it in front of an entire social gathering like this. Though she probably should’ve thought of that before she played a game built around the talent in the presence of a house full of people, all things considered.

It had been too tempting, though; a computer game that pretty much counted as real training? No one who knew her could’ve expected her to pass that up.

No one seemed to know what to make of her response…except for Kazi, who kept proving to be very sharp indeed, and whose eyebrows were raising slowly. They, clearly, had a good guess.

“I’ve seen Moonshadow elves play this game, though,” Callum said, baffled. “They sometimes get the stealth mechanics better, and have some better guesses about the, you know, plot and stuff, but…”

Rayla debated just…bluntly changing the subject, like Callum himself made such a habit of. It’d be uncomfortable, but she could probably do it. She’d made something of a spectacle, though. Maybe it would just be easier to…not.

Kazi raised an eyebrow at her, inquisitive, as though asking permission for something. Though unsure precisely what they were asking, Rayla sighed, and inclined her head a little, and they smiled at her. “I always wondered,” they spoke up, light and curious. “Do you need to understand a language to interpret it? For example-“ Their hands lifted and signed out what looked like a full sentence; watching it, Rayla twitched, sighed, and turned around fully to face the group.

“I can tell you lied, I can’t tell what you said,” Rayla offered, resigned. “If you were actually trying to talk to me instead of just doing a test, I could probably get an idea of what you meant.”

They nodded, fascinated. “I see. So intent matters.”

“A lot, when you’re talking to real people. Less for other stuff.” She glanced across the rest of them, waiting to see if any of them would make the connection, and-

Sure enough, Kassa had started laughing. Quietly, but the shake of her shoulders was obvious. Everyone else was in varying states of realisation, until-

“…Haïata harat,” said Nihatasi, looking shocked. “You’re an actual truthfinder, aren’t you?”

Rayla rolled her eyes, then mock-bowed. “Actual Truthfinder, pleased to meet you,” she agreed, and managed to find a little amusement for the elf’s flabbergasted expression. Kassa, for her part, was still laughing; Pava looked speculative; Soren was squinting as though trying to muddle through a complicated maths problem. And Callum…

She sneaked a glance at him.

Callum, apparently, was looking very embarrassed. She wasn’t completely sure why at first. But then:

“Sky’s Breath, Callum,” Kassa giggled, finally managing to speak. “Only you could find a random truthfinder who likes games and is a stupidly good stealth specialist at a horn salon.”

“We call you ke ikoracaril, you know,” Nihatasi said to Rayla, a moment later, apparently still reeling a little. “Sacred truth-callers. It’s – a holy gift, isn’t it, for Moonshadow elves? Like being born with wings is for us?”

“Being born with wings isn’t sacred for most Skywing elves, Nisi,” Kassa reminded, amused, her own wings twitching. Her girlfriend waved her off, eyes intently curious.

“Is it true you can just look at people and know what they’re hiding?” She persisted; Callum looked a little faint at the mere question, more worried now than abashed. “Because that’s one of the rumours about ikoracaril, but Scion of Shadow says most of you aren’t even half that good but Scion of Shadow is a game so I don’t even know what’s true.”

Rayla cast a very dry look at Callum, who couldn’t have embodied ‘I’m trying to hide something and there’s a Priest of the Light looking at me’ any more clearly if he’d tried. “…People who are the right kind of religious might think it’s sacred, but that’s not most Moonshadow elves,” Rayla said, eventually, answering the questions in turn. “But it’s only the best truthfinders – the Priests of Moon’s Light and Shadow – who are good enough to just…see things in people like that. Most of us train for different things and never get that far.”

“…But you can still tell when people are lying?” Soren asked, very slowly, glancing intermittently at Callum, who’d not particularly relaxed at her explanation.

“Direct lies, always,” Rayla confirmed. “The rest depends. I’m not that good.”

“…But you…played the game, without the prompts?” Callum finally spoke up, weakly. “So you’re that good of a truthfinder, right?”

“I’m as good as start-of-game Isora, Callum,” she told him dryly. “I don’t know I’ll be able to keep up when she gets crazier at it, I’ll probably need to turn some prompts back on in the late game.”

He nodded, slowly, but still looked a bit spooked. It occurred to Rayla for the first time that, depending on how attached he was to his secrets, this…could be a genuine problem. His friends were obviously in the know for at least some of what he was hiding, but that didn’t mean he wanted her to figure it out. He was used to having at least some control over who found things out, and the prospect of her suddenly working the secrets out of her own accord, maybe without him even knowing, was frightening. He liked her, he liked her a lot, but that didn’t mean he felt safe with her knowing everything-

Rayla blinked, then jerked her head away and purposefully redirected her thoughts. She was still so open from truthfinding all through that game, it was all too easy to pick up on everything he was putting out, and evidently he wasn’t comfortable with that. So she looked at part of the wall, instead, and fell into a two-second exercise of determining where it was weakest. It dislodged the thread of magic, at least.

“…Oof,” said Pava, his first offering since Rayla’s revelation. “Still not – exactly ideal.”

Kazi exchanged a look with Kassa, who no longer looked amused. Then Kazi signed a quick, precise sentence at Callum; he grimaced, and offered a slow reply. Watching them, Rayla could tell that Kassa understood enough of whatever sign language it was to get the gist, but probably not understand fully.

“Yeah, alright then,” Kassa said finally, and stood, making shooing motions at the room at large. “I think it’s time for us all to clear out and let the two of you have a chat.”

Soren’s head shot up. “Really?” He demanded, indignantly, arms folded. There was a muffled metallic clink from his concealed armour. He shot a very level look at Rayla – not hostile, but probably the closest to it he’d ever come, even during the Honour Games. He was not pleased at the suggestion that she be left alone with Callum. She wasn’t a great deal more pleased about it herself under the circumstances, and could practically feel her shoulders hunching.

“Yes, Soren, really.” Kassa pulled him up; he was bulky enough that it looked like it took effort. “We can go start on the dishes and you can lurk out on the landing or something, come on.”

Pava and Kazi and Nihatasi all exchanged a glance and obligingly went for the door, shooting Callum varying looks of concern as they went. Soren went much more reluctantly. He’d taken his sheathed sword with him when they went upstairs and had it in his hand now, grip a little stronger than warranted. He was worried. He went anyway, following Kassa out; he hesitated at the landing and said “Don’t close the door.”

All of them except Soren went down the stairs, and then the next flight of stairs, until Rayla heard their footsteps distantly in the kitchen. Soren went down the first stairs and lingered probably somewhere near the balcony. For a human, she thought, that was about far enough that he’d not be able to make out the words if she was quiet, but certainly close enough to hear someone shout. Close enough to run and get to Callum, if something seemed to be going badly.

She stilled, a series of memories and observations and clues surging together so quickly and cohesively she couldn’t have stopped it if she tried; involuntarily, she said, “Oh, he’s your bodyguard,” and everything suddenly made much more sense. A substantial piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

Callum, who’d been lingering quietly in his chair as the others left, flinched as though struck and lifted his hands to his face, groaning. “This is such a mess,” he said, a little despairingly, a little upset.

Rayla winced. She’d not meant to figure that out. But there wasn’t any undoing it now, was there? “Sorry.”

He lowered his hands and attempted a half-smile at her. “Well, it’s not exactly your fault I’m, er.”

“Completely covered in secrets?” Rayla suggested, trying for levity.

He snorted. “Yeah, pretty much.” They’d been sitting very close before. Now, with Rayla having turned part-way around, there was a little more space. He glanced at the computer monitor, where Scion of Shadow had so recently been playing, and sighed. “…I don’t even know what to say.”

“’Please don’t work out all my secrets before I’m ready for you to know them’?” She offered, and he made a face; that had apparently been uncomfortably accurate.

“I mean, yes?” Callum said, helplessly. “But – is that even possible? I don’t really know how this works – can you turn truthfinding off, or does it just sort of…” He waved vaguely, unable to finish his sentence.

“The better I get, the easier stuff gets to tell,” she summarised, watching him. “Things that are – easy – happen on their own, a lot of the time. I can’t really control that.”

He processed that, then nodded towards the door. “So, just now…”

“It was too obvious,” she admitted, uncomfortably. “It’s just – he was waiting outside the room at the game society the whole time for no good reason, he walked just behind you when you left, like a guard – your friends were worried about you being alone with me without him there and you were guilty about it and he asked if you were alive when he got home and found out, he’s wearing concealed armour and takes his sword around the house and – and was pointing out to you, earlier, that I’ve got stealth and assassination training, he’s on the same degree scheme I am, and right now he’s staying in hearing range in case you shout for him. It was just…”

Callum sighed. “Just like truthfinding synergy in the game,” he recognised, wryly. “You learn enough stuff and then it all just – comes together, right away?”

She snorted. “Pretty much. So far, they do seem to have a pretty good idea of how it goes, in that game. It was…just like training.”

“Was it hard to play?” He asked, sounding morbidly interested. “Getting all the information, doing the synergies, talking to the dragon?”

“Talking to the dragon was hard,” Rayla said, remembering. “It’d be easier if she was real, and really talking to me, but you can’t get as much out of a story or – or game, or book, as a real person. So it made it a lot harder. I had to pretend she was real to be able to guess what to say. Everything else was…medium-easy, I suppose.”

“Right.” He stared at his hands for a while, clad in their usual half-finger gloves, as if they held the answers to his conundrum. “…What have you figured out already?”

Rayla thought of the earlier ‘synergy’ she’d had first, and flushed. “The bodyguard thing is probably the first important thing I’ve figured out,” she said, quite truthfully. “I’ve mostly not been trying to read all your secrets, you know.”

Callum’s lips twitched, just a little. “I…appreciate that? I’ve probably not exactly been making it easy.”

“You really haven’t.”

He smiled slightly, and then was silent for a long while, thinking. Long enough, in fact, that Soren apparently got concerned and called up the stairs “Everything okay?”

Callum flushed, and called back “Fine!” She observed this, frowning lightly, glancing between him and his door. Soren was a lot further away than she thought he should be. The bottom of the stairs was too far. Outside the game society room had been too far, too. What were the standards, here? Did he expect Callum to be fast and capable enough to defend himself until he arrived? If so, was that justified?

She wasn’t sure. And, abruptly, she was concerned for him. He wasn’t bodyguarded very closely, maybe, but that there was one at all implied there was some sort of risk of attack…

“Here’s the deal,” Callum said, after another long few seconds had passed in quiet as he mustered his thoughts. “I…am hiding kind of a few things. Some of them aren’t a huge deal to keep secret, but – I still need to get permission to tell someone – new. And…” He hesitated.

And he didn’t know if he was ready for her to know any of it, yet. She nodded, and thought for a moment. She thought of her duty as an elf of Xadia. “I need to ask you a question.”

Callum shifted nervously. “Er?”

It wasn’t terribly polite of her. She’d be able to tell, whether he answered or not, the approximate answer to something as direct as this. But unless she asked, she wasn’t sure she’d be comfortable intentionally blinding herself to his secrets, given he or his family or both were probably pretty important. His secrets could plausibly be damaging to keep hidden. So: “Do you or your family or close associates consider yourselves enemies of Xadia, or of any Xadian province, or any heads of state of Xadia?” It was, almost word-for-word, a question she’d been trained to keep handy for suspicious characters.

“Oh.” Abruptly, he seemed to relax. Apparently he was entirely fine with that sort of question. “Yeah, no, we’re definitely not.”

It was true, and he wasn’t carefully leaving anything out either. She looked more closely to confirm: he believed it, and probably no one he was closely associated with could be considered an enemy of Xadia either. Rayla felt some of the stiffness in her shoulders loosen, and she sighed. “Then your secrets aren’t any of my business,” she told him, a little dry. “I’ll do what I can not to…truthfind you. But – there’s a lot of clues already. If we keep talking, there’ll be more. I might not be able to stop…” She searched for the word.

There was a wry tilt to his lips. “Synergising?”

Rayla snorted. “Yeah. It kind of happens on its own.” She hesitated. “Pretty much the only way I’m not going to guess eventually is if we stop talking or meeting up.”

He made a face. “I don’t want to do that,” he said, then reddened a little, like he was worried he’d given away too much.

Something tight and tense in her chest relaxed a little. “Up to you.”

Tentatively, he offered her a smile. Despite everything, it caused a fluttering of warm fuzzy feelings in her chest, because apparently the circumstances hadn’t been enough to dislodge her infatuation.

A moment later, she thought of something. “I’ll try not to ask direct questions about anything important,” she decided. “I can get answers from those even if you don’t actually say anything.”

Callum tilted his head, looking a little more comfortable and a little more fascinated, all at the same time. “That’s pretty cool,” he observed. “That’s in the game, too, actually. I wonder how accurate it’ll end up being?”

“Well, I’ll let you know, if you let me play it again.”

“I will,” he said, more cheerfully. “When there’s time. I’m kinda busy the rest of this week, but – next week, definitely.”

She tilted her head at him. “Sure. But what are you even busy with, in the middle of the holiday?”

He opened his mouth with the clear intention of answering honestly, then just as visibly reconsidered half-way through and blinked. “I…have no idea if answering that counts as a clue or not.” He pursed his lips, pensive. “I think I’d better wait a couple days before getting back to you about that.” And then: “I probably should’ve just said ‘work’, shouldn’t I.”

“If it would be a direct lie, no,” Rayla reminded him, lips twitching. “Those stand out like a sore thumb.”

“Oh, right.” Callum blinked, then looked curious. “Have I actually, you know, outright lied to you? I mean, I don’t really make a habit of it, but…”

“Only once, actually. Today.” Rayla nodded towards one of the canvases in the room – specifically, the one which only had some basic colours and lighting on it so far. “You said you hadn’t decided what it was going to be, or something.”

He followed her gaze, saw it, then flushed bright red. “Oh. Er. Right.”

Rayla carefully avoided thinking about that and did not guess anything. She was getting the impression that she’d have to do quite a lot of deliberate thought control here, to keep herself from being too invasive. There was one thing, though, that she really wanted to know. For her peace of mind, and depending on the answer, to have a chat with Soren about. “Do you need help?” She asked, at last.

Callum looked taken-aback. “What?”

“You’ve got a bodyguard,” she pointed out. “He doesn’t seem like he thinks someone’s actively trying to get you, but he’s there. He thinks there’s a chance random elves like me could be out to get you. Is that just because you’re important, or are you actually in danger?”

Nonplussed, he blinked at her for a few seconds. Involuntarily, he smiled, the expression fluttering at the edges of his lips like he was touched by this sign of concern. “…I don’t know what I can tell you without giving you more clues.”

There was very little that wouldn’t. Rayla nodded, shoulders easing a little, and said “No active danger then, that you know about? Just a precaution thing?”

“You got all of that just from me not telling you anything?” He asked, admiringly. “That’s crazy.”

At least he didn’t seem to mind. “Me being a truthfinder got me a full scholarship for university here,” she offered, shrugging. “It’s…kind of a high-demand skill. For a reason.”

He considered that. “…I’m really looking forward to seeing you play the rest of that game, now.”

“Believe me, so am I,” she said ruefully. “I can’t wait to tell Runaan I found a computer game that’s basically training.” Before he could ask, she gestured towards the door. “Want to go? I should probably have a chat with your bodyguard.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, then finally spoke. “Uh. I mean. Okay?” He hesitated. “Don’t – don’t mention him being my bodyguard outside of the people in this house. It’s mostly just my housemates that know about it. Venanin doesn’t. Evairas does, but he’s an old friend from home too.”

Rayla headed to the door, and paused. “Wasn’t he supposed to be here today?” She looked down the stairs and lifted an eyebrow at Soren, who was blatantly watching from down the hall.

“Probably too busy with work. That happens a lot.”

She descended the steep loft stairs and headed straight for Soren. “If you actually don’t trust me, you should stay closer,” she told him, without preamble. “If I wanted to kill or kidnap him you wouldn’t have been able to stop me from there.”

His eyes narrowed at her, while above on the loft landing Callum spluttered. He seemed to consider whether or not to be threatened, and then whether or not to be insulted, and finally he just nodded. “How would you get away?” He asked her, by all impressions taking serious mental notes.

“Loft window,” she offered. “I might not have wings, but scaling buildings is easy, with or without a hostage.”

“There’s security runes on the windows,” Soren pointed out, interested. “Can you get past those?”

Rayla had trained on circumventing quite a lot of magical security, and some non-magical. “Depends on the runes,” she decided after a moment. “I’d need to try them to find out.”

“Game it out sometime?” He suggested, with anticipation.

She grinned. “Sounds like a plan.”

Soren extended his hand, human-style, and they shook on it. Meanwhile Callum peered down from above, perturbed. “…Did you two just agree to stage my kidnapping for training?” He questioned, descending the stairs to make faces at them from closer range.

Callum’s apparent bodyguard reached out and ruffled his hair. “Don’t worry about it. It’ll be fun!”

“You always say training will be fun,” he complained, warding Soren’s hand off and finger-combing his hair back to rights. “And then it’s mostly just painful.”

“Better run it by – home – first, though.” Soren grinned at her. “I’m still up for sparring next week, though. Can you do Monday or Tuesday night?”

“Tuesday’s better, but I can do either.” She paused for a moment, eyes narrowing. “And – now I think about it, we’ve got crossover training this Sunday, right?”

“Sure have,” he agreed. “Sunday, then. And Tuesday for sparring. And sometime when I’ve cleared it, we can test you on the house wards.”

Callum looked between them. “…Somehow, I feel like letting you two make friends is going to come back to bite me.”

---

Downstairs, Callum was briefly interrogated as to the disposition of his and Rayla’s talk. Kazi and Pava seemed to be clattering about in the kitchen, but everyone else seemed keenly interested. “She knows Soren is my bodyguard,” he said, resigned. “That’s about it.”

They all considered that. “To be honest, it’s not that hard to figure out,” Kassa pointed out, amused. “You really lucked out on the campus at large coming up with their own explanation for it.”

“’Lucked out’. Sure.” He sounded particularly sour about it.

“Better than the alternative,” she shot back. Rayla wanted to ask, but before she could- “What are you doing about the party, anyway?”

Callum stopped. He glanced at Rayla. He coughed, flushed a little, and said. “Er. It’s my birthday this week? And we’re having a party. Well. Two parties, actually, but the first one is just for my family-“

“He’s trying to invite you to the Friday party,” Nihatasi contributed helpfully. “Most of our friends will be there!”

“My brother, too,” Callum said, looking genuinely pleased about it. “He gets here tomorrow, actually. Along with. Er. A couple other people. They’re not staying past Thursday though.”

Rayla looked at him, automatically figured out that he very rarely got to see his brother, also automatically figured out that whoever was leaving on Thursday was the hush-hush sort of family member involved in Callum’s various secrets, and blinked and forced her mind away before she could see anything else. She was quite sure that the family-only party was the thing he was ‘busy’ with this week that he’d been so concerned about mentioning. “Uhuh,” she said, dubiously. “So…this party. It’ll be pretty busy, I guess?”

Callum looked embarrassed. “Well. Fairly?”

She didn’t need truthfinding to deduce that he really wanted her to attend anyway. She sighed. The prospect of an actual crowded social engagement was fairly intimidating, but…she knew several attendees already, right? And she was interested to meet Callum’s brother. She wondered if he was this bad at being secretive. “Yeah, okay,” she decided, steeling her nerves. “I’ll come.”

“Well thank fuck for that,” Kassa said, voice dry, and then promptly began ushering them to the kitchen. “Right then. Time to clear up. Rayla, you get first-time-guest privileges and don’t have to help if you don’t want, but otherwise-“

“We know, we know,” Nihatasi complained, and skittered ahead down the hall.

“Some of us are already washing dishes, thank you very much,” Pava’s voice complained from the kitchen. “And, you know, would like some extra hands. You’re a seriously messy chef, Kassa.”

“Fuck you,” Kassa called back cheerfully, and stalked kitchenwards with wings lifted in a sort of Skywing-exclusive swagger.

Rayla observed this with amusement. “I’ll help wash up.” It only seemed decent.

She was relegated to dish-drying duty once there, and equipped with a small towel. Callum replaced Pava at the sink, and their respective angles meant that she didn’t see, not at first, but-

For a moment, just a moment, Rayla caught a glimpse of the skin of his hands and forearms where he’d removed his gloves and pushed up his sleeves. They were viciously scarred.

It was only a glimpse. But it unsettled her for the rest of the evening, even once she finally headed home. Not only for the fact that she was pretty sure the scarring went further than his arms, but also…she couldn’t tell what it was from. She’d never seen anything like it. Thin, jagged furrows branching this way and that along his arms, like cracks spiderwebbing through broken stone. Not like a lightning scar at all, and that was the closest thing she could think of. It was bewildering, and not a little worrying.

She stayed up thinking for a long time, that night.

---

End chapter.

I had like 90% of this written since months ago but wasn’t certain I wanted the truthfinding conversation to go how it did. Today I decided it’s fine and finished it off.

Fun fact: Callum’s exotic scarring in this fic is sometimes my primary motivation for writing it. I just fucking love scars. To the point where getting to write about someone’s exciting scars is actually significant motivation for me, apparently. Accordingly I’m extremely pleased to finally mention the Callum Scars in this chapter.

I want to play Scion of Shadow quite badly, but alas. Ain’t real. :(

It took some effort to wrestle myself back into the fandom after all the new canon stuff dropped. I blocked tumblr for a month to avoid seeing any of it because I was experiencing Fear Of Emotions and also low spoons, which is a poor combination when trying to catch up on new content of a thing one likes. All of this is to say I am tenuously here, please leave comments to kindle my enthusiasm so I can write more shit, I would like that.

Worldbuilding notes:

Three Phoenix: a popular Xadian card game, with cards themed around three different types of phoenix. I’m not going to build it beyond that because I have an irrational grudge against card games.

Memory chips: Used in a lot of game modules as extra storage space for save files. Like the ones you used to have to shove into the PS1 and such. Around the same size and shape as chipsinger chips.

‘Haïata harat’: Brevili, loosely translates to ‘Sky-heights breathing’. A religious invocation / swear. (Brevili conlang)

‘ke ikoracari’: Brevili, the honoured term for a truthfinder. Literally translates as ‘sacred truth-caller’, but ‘kora’ is a complicated word so technically it can also translate as skin-caller, heart-caller, soul-caller, etc. (Brevili conlang)

Race-based graphical settings: Some Xadian games will have differing graphical settings based on the race/species playing it. If their game is from the perspective of a Moonshadow elf, like Scion of Shadow, they’ll generally try to tweak the settings so that each race sees approximately what a Moonshadow elf would see. Skywing distance vision gets cut so it’s blurrier in the distance, most races get light level boosts in dark places to simulate Moonshadow elf dark vision, and so on. Often there won’t be a setting for humans, but Callum has learned that the Sunfire elf setting is close enough.

#rayllum #tdp fic #tdp rayla #tdp callum #tdp soren #the ceracurist #ceracurist au

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tenspontaneite · 3 years ago

Note

i don’t usually read modern AUs, but after binging PIAJ. i tried The Ceracurist. you have singlehandedly reformed my opinions. the attention to world building, while maintaining parts from the source material. the banter, the gaming, both video and sports, is awesome. you are a master of your craft

Bless you, that's lovely to hear.

Originally, Ceracurist as the basic concept (Callum is a ceracurist and that's how he and Rayla meet) occurred to me and I thought it was fun but on its own that wasn't enough to interest me in writing anything. But then one of my friends who I was talking about it to accidentally tripped my Worldbuilding Engine ™ and then I went a bit nuts and then I just sort of had to write it lol. So the fic mostly exists because I found the worldbuilding too enjoyable to leave it unwritten.

At this point I'd consider Ceracurist to be my second favourite tdp work of mine, after piaj. It has some components that are a ton of fun to play with.

#asks #ceracurist au #the ceracurist #i like how ive been able to fully incorporate some broad scope world level metaphysics in this #like some parts match with what I'm using in piaj but ultimately it's a bit too much its own thing #for me to want to commit to it in a canon adjacent serious project like piaj #but ceracurist allows me to let loose a bit more with broader scope changes and i do enjoy that #some of its wilder big picture worldbuilding formed the foundation for my first plausible original fiction idea in years

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tenspontaneite · 3 years ago

Text

The Ceracurist (Chapter 4/?)

“Is something wrong?” Callum asked, pausing half-way up the stairs, and she blinked.

“Er,” Rayla said, listening. “I think Pava and Kazi were talking about me?”

“Huh,” he said, interested, and kept ascending. “What about?”

She shot him a look, uncertain. “Whether you should be showing me around without…Soren…apparently. Or something like that.”

He stopped for a second, looking abruptly very awkward. “...Ah."

(Chapter length: 12k. Ao3 link)

---

On Monday, Rayla spent an entire call reassuring Ethari that her Full Moon had been perfectly fine, honest, which was tough to do without actually telling him how she’d spent it. He ostensibly lacked her specific magical talents, but he could’ve fooled her; he seemed to have a preternatural sense for when one of his family was hiding something from him.

She also went to afternoon training at the bellatorium as usual, had a brief back-and-forth with Kazi over Sunbeam, and…well, ended up calling Callum again. She’d have been more embarrassed if it wasn’t always him asking to talk.

In this case, he’d made the request shortly before she disappeared into the shared kitchen to attend to her dinner; by the time she returned and saw his message he’d sent a few disconnected question-marks, and then finally a forlorn Okay, maybe later?

Rayla rolled her eyes, and before she thought any better of it, opened a call. It took him a minute to pick it up, since presumably he wasn’t constantly sat at his computer, but his increasingly-familiar face and increasingly-familiar room resolved into the monitor soon enough. “Oh, hey,” he said, looking pleased. “I thought you weren’t up for it today.”

“I was just in the kitchen, Callum,” she said, exasperated. “You know, feeding myself? Kind of important.”

He went a little pink, as though embarrassed. “Oh. Right. Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Er. Food’s important, yeah.”

“Mind you, I’m pretty lazy about it,” she allowed, a moment later. “I usually just buy portions of stuff from street vendors or whatever and then heat it up later.”

Callum blinked at her. “Is that because you don’t want to cook, or because you don’t know how?”

She considered it. “I know a bit of ‘how’. Never really put in the time to get any good at it, though. I was always too busy with other stuff.”

Abruptly, there was a grin on his face. “You’re not going to get away with that for long if you start visiting our house, let me tell you.” She lifted an eyebrow, and he elaborated “Kassa’s really into cooking. She gets everyone to help with dinner at some point, it’s just, you know, how she is. It’s useful! I didn’t know anything about cooking or cleaning or whatever before I came here.”

“Must’ve been pretty pampered,” Rayla observed, putting that together with rich and hiding something. Her sense for secrets, even half-trained as it was, twitched distractingly along the shape of that hidden knowledge, but she didn’t try to follow it. Not now, at any rate. “Y’know. Wherever you used to live.”

He laughed, sheepish, and rubbed the back of his head. “Er, yeah. You’re not wrong, there.” He did not elaborate. The sense of what he wasn’t saying nagged at her.

Rayla sighed. Making friends with someone this mysterious and secretive was going to be terrible for her blood pressure. She still hadn’t got the story of how or why he, a human, was doing a mastery in thaumaturgy. “Did you learn the magic from Kassa’s family, too?” She asked, a little tartly, and he suddenly looked very shifty.

“…Well, some of it, sure,” he hedged. “But, you know, I’ve…been here a pretty long time now. Lots of time to learn all kinds of stuff. I’d definitely never played Antiquitora before I came here, that’s for sure.”

It was a pretty blatant subject change. But she didn’t press further; trying to chase secrets with so few pieces sounded like a great way to give herself magestrain. She listened, reluctantly interested, as Callum detailed how he’d met Kazi and, by extension, the rest of the game society.

“I saw a leaflet putting a call out for people who knew Katolis Sign Language, to help with a demonstration in a lesson?” he explained. “And I don’t know if you know, but Kazi teaches some sign languages, and studies linguistics, so…yeah, that’s how I met them. And then they invited me to the society a while later.”

“And then wiped the Antiquitora board with you?” she guessed, and he laughed.

“It’s a rite of passage we all must go through,” he claimed, then grinned. “Well. Except you, apparently.”

Rayla snorted. “Nah, they still wiped the board with me. Just a couple days later, is all.”

They chattered for a little while longer about the game society as it had been a few years back, with some of its regulars since graduated and departed, or otherwise too busy to come by very often. “Still, we get a good few people coming by the official meet-ups,” Callum said, a little wistful. “And we go round each other’s houses most weeks. It’s nice.”

It occurred to her, as she looked at him then, that this – his apparent social alacrity, and wide circle of friends – wasn’t something he’d always had. There was something about the way he’d said it that echoed with the memory of loneliness, and it called unerringly to her own experience. Sometime, years ago, he’d been a stranger in a strange place with no one he could really talk to, just like her. She blinked off the sudden flash of arcane intuition, and nodded. “It must be,” she agreed, quiet. “You all seem like pretty good friends.”

He shrugged, but looked pleased. “They’re a good group. I’m glad I met them, yeah.” He tilted his head, and looked at her curiously. “Do you have any societies like that, yet? I know you’ve not been in Gullcrest for long, but…”

Rayla tensed minutely. “…Not really? I go to some training, but that’s…not exactly social.” It was, for most of them. She was perfectly aware that most of her Honour Games team socialised outside of training, and some of them were quite close. But she’d never quite managed to break through her distance to join them, and they’d seemed too intimidated to reach out themselves.

…They’d come to look for her, though. When she hadn’t shown up for training. They’d noticed she was gone, and had been worried about her, and had come looking. She’d been too tired to really think about it at the time, but now…

“Something wrong?” he asked, and she blinked out of her reverie.

Rayla paused for a moment, wondering if she should say anything. “The other day, when I skipped training after Full Moon, my teammates came looking for me,” she admitted, eventually. “I’m not really friends with any of them. I…didn’t expect it.”

He regarded her, a flicker of understanding passing through his eyes. “You didn’t think they’d care enough to wonder where you were?”

She shrugged, uncomfortable. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“It’s nice they came to check on you.” He smiled a little. “I guess maybe they care more than you thought they did. Do you never hang out with them or anything?”

Rayla scowled. “No.”

“Well, maybe you should?” he said, then amended “I mean, if you like them, I guess. I don’t know what they’re like.”

“Now you sound like Ethari,” Rayla muttered, more to herself than to him.

“Hm?”

“Never mind.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. Training’s just…training. It doesn’t need to be a social thing.”

“Doesn’t mean it can’t be, though,” Callum pointed out. “Soren’s friends with a lot of his teammates from – hey, actually, what is it you’re training? You never said.”

She opened her mouth to respond, but then there was the sound of loud, impatient knocking on the other end of the call. His head jerked up and turned to the side.

Apologetically, he said “Er, sorry, hang on-“ and stood, going for the door. If his privacy runes worked anything like hers did, they’d muffle pretty much any sound from the rest of the building except direct knocking on the door, so long as it was closed. She heard it open, out of view, and the exasperated voice of a familiar elf filtering through.

“-been calling you for ten minutes, already,” said someone who Rayla was fairly sure was Nihatasi. “What have you got your door closed for? Were you gaming?”

“Er, no, I was just…” He reappeared, just on the edge of the lightcatcher’s range; she saw him glancing nervously to the screen. He shot her a questioning look that she wasn’t sure how to parse. Asking if she was okay being acknowledged, maybe? Cautiously, Rayla nodded, and he cleared his throat. “I was just, er, talking. On Sunbeam.”

“Oh, huh.” Rayla heard footsteps, and the elf came into view. “Is it your brother? Or-“ she blinked at the monitor, eyes blue and owlish as they spotted her. “Oh! Rayla! What a surprise!” she exclaimed, abruptly far more energetic, scrambling further into view. “I didn’t know you two had been talking!”

She mustered her best reserved Moonshadow-face, refusing to flush. “…Hi, Nihatasi.”

“Oh, I wish I could talk to you, but-“ her hand shot out and caught Callum by the edge of the scarf, tugging imperiously. “It’s dinner time, you know! And this one here had his door closed so he couldn’t hear us yelling for him-“

“I know, I know, I just lost track of time.” Callum rolled his eyes and patted Nihatasi consolingly on the arm. “It’s fine, I’ll be down to help in a minute, just…” He glanced towards his screen, where Rayla and the lightcatcher remained in view.

“You’re coming tomorrow, right?” Nihatasi asked of her, looking over. “Callum said he’d invited you? You’re coming over?”

“…Yes?” Rayla offered, still a little thrown.

“You can talk again tomorrow, then,” she declared, nodding decisively. “It’ll be good to have you. We need to, like, feed you, and let you at the computers, and make sure you’ve met everyone-“

“Nisi,” Callum cut her off, exasperated, and she stopped.

“Right, dinner,” she repeated, and pushed Callum towards the computer. “Say bye, and we’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

Callum paused in front of the lightcatcher, smiling ruefully. “Sorry,” he offered. “I really did forget what time it was. But, yeah, we’ll see you tomorrow.”

The call closed shortly afterwards. Rayla was left blinking at the empty screen, and musing that…well, after tomorrow, she’d have spent time speaking to Callum, one way or another, every day for five days running. That was…probably excessive.

He’s the one who keeps calling, she reminded herself, and spent the rest of the evening steadfastly refusing to think about why that might be.

---

For all that there was no scheduled training for her on Tuesdays, Rayla kept herself well-enough occupied for the morning and early afternoon before the meet-up. She went through some forms alone in a training ground, did her usual stretching and agility exercises, and then retired back to her room to work on some truthfinding coursework on the computer for as long as she could bear.

She was on the edge of strain by the end of it, her arcanum pulsing at her like a weird metaphysical headache. Rayla grimaced, took a painkiller, and went to go wash up. She’d overdone it a little; on purpose even, out of some hope that wearing herself out would make her senses less twitchy around Callum and his many obvious secrets. Time would tell if it worked or not.

In the end, uncertain of the precise time she was supposed to be there, Rayla pulled up the address of the house and headed out in mid-afternoon, picking her way across the city streets with something now approaching familiarity. The district Callum lived in was one of the newer ones, further from the cliff edge and built up along the river; she thought it wasn’t a coincidence that it was one of the only places in Gullcrest known to have human communication lines installed.

Finally, Rayla arrived in a road arrayed with attractive, moderately-sized houses: all in the Skywing style, with wide windows, and a small landing balcony on the second floor of every building. Most of them seemed to have loft rooms too, each appointed with their own slanted windows, large enough to admit an adult elf. Each house stood independently, with its own garden space around. It wasn’t something you tended to see in the older parts of the city, and certainly seemed expensive. She inspected the address critically, uncertain if she was in the right place, but…

If this house was technically the property of one of its residents’ parents, she supposed it made enough sense that students would be living in a place like this. Even so, it seemed ridiculous.

Eventually, she approached the house whose gate plaque cheerfully proclaimed it as OAKWING HOUSE, as per the directions she’d been given. There was some kind of small winged animal sunning itself on the balcony above; she squinted at it, but couldn’t identify it from below except to recognise that it had some very iridescent feathers. Eventually she came to the door, and knocked.

She heard nothing through the door, which wasn’t a surprise, given how comprehensive she expected the runes on a house like this to be. But the doors to the balcony upstairs were open, as were the windows all around the house, and she heard plenty through those. “Someone’s at the door!” shouted an unfamiliar voice, and Nihatasi yelled back with “yeah, I heard!” After a fair bit of scrambling, the door opened on a cheerful Skywing face.

“Oh, good!” Nihatasi said at the sight of her, and stepped back to wave her in. “You’re here! We were worried you might have trouble finding us – we’re kind of far out from the Edge district, you know? Come in, come in, Kazi and Pava are already here!” Bemusedly, she allowed herself to be led in, the other elf chattering all the while. “Callum’s still painting, I think, he probably didn’t hear anything, you know what he’s like. Or – do you? I guess you’ve only known him for a little bit so you might not, but anyway it’s like the whole world disappears when he’s drawing, it’s pretty funny actually-“

“Nisi, you’re literally going to talk someone’s ears off one of these days,” said someone from the next room over, sounding exasperated. It was a voice Rayla didn’t recognise. One of the housemates, perhaps? “Maybe just introduce me to the new person and then show her around? Or better yet, get Callum to show her around, I know he’s excited about it.”

Rayla determinedly did not react to that, but looked at Nihatasi inquisitively. She seemed entirely undaunted, but redirected their route. From the entryway they entered a hallway adorned with three doors and a stairwell; all of the doors were open, and Rayla was immediately led through the first on the left. It turned out to lead to a kitchen almost the match in size of her wing’s communal one, where an elf woman with interestingly-patterned dark wings was wielding a knife at a chopping board full of unsuspecting onions. She turned to look at them as they entered, eyes settling appraisingly.

“You’ll be Rayla, then,” she said, offering a sharp grin. “Nice to meet you. I’d say hello properly, but I’m kind of in the middle of something. How are you with spicy food, by the way?”

She blinked. “…Okay, ish?” Moonshadow elves, on the whole, did not often go in for spicy dishes. She’d not had much opportunity to sample it, but had enjoyed it well enough on the occasions she had.

“Nice,” the elf proclaimed. “I’ll stick with medium-spicy then. Making curry for everyone. Technically two curries, but who’s counting?”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Nihatasi asked her, amused, and she paused for a moment.

“Oh, right. Yeah, I’m Kassa. Welcome to the house, and all that.” She waved her knife as though in greeting, and turned back to her chopping as Rayla was led back through the door and past another.

“Wait in here, okay? I’ll go get Callum,” Nihatasi instructed, and nudged her helpfully into the room. She promptly turned heel and flounced up the stairs.

Rayla looked past the doorway. It opened into what was, very plainly, a living area. There was a sizeable indent in the middle of the floor, containing a communal seating area in the Skywing style, its edges padded comfortably with well-upholstered cushions, all of it arranged around a low table in the middle. At the front end of the room was not only a viewscreen, but also a human television. Rayla wondered incredulously if it was actually connected to any networks.

For all the apparent comfort of the central pit, it was entirely abandoned for the moment. Instead, Pava and Kazi were arranged at a back corner where an armchair sat beside a pair of bookcases; Pava was out of his hoverchair and had some sort of module casing open on the floor, and Kazi was in the armchair, inspecting his work. Both of them looked up as she entered, with Pava having to crane his neck quite far to manage it.

“Oh, you again,” Pava observed, waving her over. He’d returned his eyes to the computing before she even began approaching. “Thought you’d turn up here, seemed that way the other day, all things considered. I’ve heard your Sunbeam is shit?”

Rayla blinked, eyebrows lifting, and wasn’t sure what to say to that. Kazi meanwhile shook their head, exasperated, and finished gesturing her over. “Don’t mind him, Rayla, he simply has some difficulties with the concept of manners.”

“My manners are perfectly fine, thank you, what else do you call offering to solve someone’s tech problems?”

“I didn’t hear an offer in there, Pava,” Kazi said, amused.

“Oh, right.” Pava looked up at her, squinting, then reached to the side and picked up the only visible module that was actually intact. He waved this in her direction impatiently. “Here.”

Baffled, Rayla cautiously took it. The casing was battered and showed clear signs of tampering, but she recognised the SUNBEAM lettering embossed at the corner, and the little firebird icon. “Er.”

Kazi rolled their eyes. “What he means to say is that he’s giving you that module.”

Rayla blinked very slowly. “I…” she stared at the module, not quite processing what was going on. “I already…have…a Sunbeam module?”

“Yes, but it’s shit,” Pava explained patiently. “It has connection lag, right? A lot of it? So.”

Still uncomprehending, she slowly tried to hand the module back.

“What are you trying to give it back for?” he demanded. “That’s yours, I gave it to you. What, do you not want it?”

She had no idea what was going on. “Modules are expensive?” she attempted, with that objection finally making its way through her confusion. “I can’t – you can’t just-“

“Does that look expensive to you?” Pava asked, arching an eyebrow, and Rayla looked at it again. Battered; very battered. Plainly it had been opened up and messed with, too. Probably several times.

She’d seen third-hand modules in better cosmetic condition. “Er…”

“Exactly,” he nodded, looking satisfied. “It cost me like, fifteen minutes of messing around. Do you even know how many of those things I’ve worked on? I have a pile of old shitty Sunbeam parts in one of the engineering rooms. Anyway, that one has up-to-date connection protocols. And also a better transfer rate with other modules. Good enough to broadcast games to your contacts, even.”

Rayla did a double-take at that. “I’ve never heard of a Sunbeam version that can do that.”

“You wouldn’t have, no,” Pava said smugly. “I made it. Still in negotiations with the Sunbeam people about it – they’ve not bought the schematic yet, but they will.” He sounded very certain of it.

She opened her mouth, then closed it, utterly bewildered. She was about to open it again and argue that some sort of upgraded prototype Sunbeam was absolutely too valuable for her to just take, when she heard a series of footsteps clamouring down the stairs in the other room: one set very fast, the other slightly less so. “You should just accept it!” Nihatasi’s voice called from the hallway, her rapid steps filtering towards the kitchen, where its door muffled her voice. “He really does make a lot of them!” Evidently, she’d heard the conversation perfectly well from there.

“Accept what?” Callum asked with interest, apparently being possessed of less keen ears, and poking his head into the room. He spotted Rayla, smiled broadly, and trotted cheerfully over. She did her best not to look too pleased about it, which was made easier by how baffled she still was. “Oh, Rayla! Hi! What’s this about – oh.” He spotted the module.

“I gave her a better Sunbeam,” Pava informed him, and then seemed to wash his hands of the conversation entirely, going back to his tinkering as if it were all a done deal. Rayla had the distinct impression that her window to object to the ridiculous gift had closed.

Callum laughed sheepishly, finally arriving by the rest of them, and looked down at the module she was still confusedly holding. “Yeah, sorry about that, Nihatasi was asking and I sort of mentioned your Sunbeam wasn’t great, and, er, Pava overheard.”

“You’re bloody lucky I did,” he said, not looking at them. “I can’t be associating with people with shitty machines, it’s shameful. What model did you even have?” He seemed to be directing this question at Rayla. “It has to be a six-hundred series, if it has that much lag, surely.”

She blinked, and thought about it. “Four-hundred, I think,” she admitted.

Pava looked appalled. “I’m almost afraid to ask about your actual computer.”

Rayla, wisely, did not comment.

It didn’t seem to help much. “Ugh,” he said, and then “Well, if you keep hanging around, I’ll see what I can do. For now-“ he waved, in a shooing sort of motion. “Take the module. Look around the house or something. Wasn’t Callum supposed to be entertaining you?”

“Showing her around,” Kazi corrected, looking very amused.

“Same difference. Not like everyone is here yet anyway.”

“They’re not?” Rayla asked, vaguely alarmed. She’d been under the impression that the core group would be all the people present.

“Venanin is coming,” Pava said, without bothering to explain who that was. “And maybe Evairas. Don’t worry, though, one of those is mostly just coming to talk to people and the other one’s just here to work with me on our latest mods, we’ll just be doing our own thing mostly – you’ll still get the computer to yourself.”

She tried to parse that. “That wasn’t-“ she attempted, only to be cut off by someone’s hand on her arm. She glanced back at Callum, bewildered, and found him offering a smile at her.

“It’s fine,” he assured, plainly spotting how off-kilter she was, and gently nudged her towards the door. Confused, the module still in her hand, she followed. “I’ll just show you around the house, alright?”

“Okay?” Rayla agreed automatically, and fell in step with him. She put the module down on a small table near the door, and went where she was led.

Behind her, she heard Pava say “Wait, is it okay that we’re letting her go off with him when Soren’s not here?” She blinked with consternation, straining to listen, and-

“You’ve seen the kitchen, right?” Callum checked, interrupting her eavesdropping on Kazi’s response, and at her nod led her around the hallway. She couldn’t hear anything more on whatever the Soren-related issue was, and frowned as she was shown towards the last unexplored room of the ground floor, as well as another door off to the side she’d not seen. “Bathroom,” he offered, and she glanced inside to see a typical example of an expansive Skywing bathing area, complete with a communal bath that would probably comfortably host the average family plus a few friends or neighbours.

Rayla wondered morbidly if any of the residents of the house were inured enough to the city-Skywing cultural practices to actually use it. She certainly hadn’t gone anywhere near the communal baths for her wing, but she knew a lot of her Skywing wingmates and even some of the Sunfire elves made use of it.

Callum wasn’t dwelling on the room, though, and was already indicating the other door. This, apparently, contained the toilet; a good one to remember. After that, still distracted, she followed him upstairs, half-straining to listen to the snippets of conversation passing between Kazi and Pava. “…could be,” Pava was saying, in tones of morbid intrigue. “It’s not like they’ve been alone before, you never know-“

“Hush, Pava, I’m certain she’s fine,” Kazi responded, exasperated. “Perhaps you’ve been playing too much Scion of Shadow recently…”

“I have not.”

“Is something wrong?” Callum asked, pausing half-way up the stairs, and she blinked.

“Er,” she said, listening, but they’d started talking about something else now. “I think Pava and Kazi were talking about me?”

“Huh,” he said, interested, and kept ascending. “What about?”

She shot him a look, uncertain. “Whether you should be showing me around without…Soren…apparently. Or something like that.”

He stopped for a second, looking abruptly very awkward. “Ah,” he offered, valiantly searching for something to say. He hesitated, looked down the stairs guiltily, sighed, and said “Well, I…guess I’ll just not close any doors,” like that was a comment that made sense in context in the slightest.

Rayla stared at him, baffled. “What?”

“Never mind?” He offered, hopefully, and crested the top of the stairwell. Clearly trying to change the subject, he indicated the nearest door. “That’s Nihatasi’s room. She doesn’t use it anymore, though, since she mostly stays with Kassa.”

Rayla took a deep, calming breath. For all that he was really, obviously concealing things, he wasn’t…directly lying. “Sure,” she said, begrudgingly, and obligingly glanced in through the open door. The room inside was large, but noticeably cluttered, its wide bed piled with clothes and books and a bizarre assortment of long staves. A variety of colourful, elaborately patterned drapes in obvious Brevili styles adorned the walls. It looked like it was used more for storage than anything else. The only thing with signs of recent use was the desk.

Callum didn’t show her in to the other rooms on the level, just named them one by one: “That’s Soren’s, that’s Kassa and Nihatasi’s,” he pointed out, at the closed doors. “And here’s the balcony doors, and, er, the…pet.”

Rayla opened her mouth to question, then actually looked. She blinked, looking through the open balcony doors to what she’d seen lounging on it earlier: a small animal with a beaked head that was looking around at them inquisitively, feathered ears lifting, aquiline eyes sharp. It was feathered on the first half of its body, and furred and feline on most of the other half. It looked almost like a gryphon, but it was so small-

“Hey, girl,” Callum said to the animal, fond and amused, as it promptly laid its head down again, chirruping at him, sprawled out on the balcony like a lazy cat. Its tail swished and its wings rustled, showing off the sheer length and breadth of its ornamental accent feathers, as well as their incredible iridescent gleam. “How’re you doing?”

The creature creeled imperiously at him, and he snickered before going over. Fascinated, Rayla followed.

Callum knelt down beside the animal and buried his hand in its neck feathers, scritching in the white ones on the underside as it made a bizarre sound somewhere between a chirp and a purr. “This is, I guess, our house pet,” he introduced, smiling helplessly at the little feathery creature. “She’s an ornamental pygmy gryphon. Oakwing breed, actually, that’s what this house is named after. Kassa has family that breeds them.”

“Oakwing,” Rayla repeated, lifting an eyebrow. She watched, and the gryphon tilted her head in a feline sort of beseeching gesture that was very familiar; cautiously, Rayla reached out and scritched behind one of the feather-ears. The little creature leaned into it happily, crooning. “Weird name, if they’re all blue.”

The feathers on the overside of the animal were largely a deep black, except for where the light hit them; there, it all shimmered in intense deep blues, with red and white accents at varying points on the feathers. It looked absolutely nothing like any colours she associated with oaks. “Apparently it makes more sense if you’ve seen an Azure Crown Oak,” Callum said wryly. “Which…I haven’t. They’re pretty rare underground trees.”

A Skywing elf, naming something after an underground tree. That was a new one. She smiled, following the gryphon’s motions and obligingly scritching along her cheek, right in around the roots of the pinfeathers. It was just like how the family shadowpaw liked his feathers scratched. “What’s she called?”

For some reason, that made Callum snicker. “Ouch,” he said, plainly, and she glanced over, frowning. It took a second for her to figure out that it was an answer, rather than an out-of-place expression of pain, and she snorted with unexpected laughter. Encouraged, he went on “Or Ow, Aïe, Stabby, or Setaseta. She answers to all of those. Also Stella, which is her, er, actual name. But…yeah.”

When Rayla was done laughing, which took a while, she managed to say “Why?”

Callum reached out and extracted one of the gryphon’s front feet from amidst her poofy chest feathers, demonstratively.

Rayla looked. “Ah.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, amused, and put the foot down. The gryphon seemed unbothered; clearly, she was used to having them messed with, judging by the blunted caps on each of her enormous hooked front talons.

“…Back home, we’ve got a shadowpaw,” she volunteered, stroking a hand down the feathery neck. “We have to trim his talons. They’re blunter than this, though.”

He looked interested. “Wow, a shadowpaw. Aren’t those pretty big?”

“Huge,” she agreed, smiling wistfully. She missed that big fluffy idiot. “I’ll have to show you pictures, sometime.”

“Sounds great,” Callum said, apparently pleased at the prospect, and withdrew his hand from the gryphon. “What do you think, Stabby?” he asked her, affectionate, and she chirruped back at him, looking pleased and lazy. “You coming? Or staying here?”

The animal blinked slowly, then stretched out indolently in the nearby sunbeam. It seemed answer enough, and Callum huffed fondly, leaning back. By mutual unspoken agreement, Rayla leaned back as well, then stood and followed him back into the house, leaving the gryphon to her sunbathing.

The stairs to Callum’s loft room were really more of a ladder; steep enough almost to need climbing. They opened out on a very shallow landing, with the door just ahead of it; there was little enough room that Rayla had to half-wait on the stairs while he opened it, the privacy rune dispelling with a smooth and gentle buzz. Here, evidently, the enchantments were in perfectly good condition. He flattened himself to the side and gestured her in, smiling, and so she went.

She stepped in, paused, lifted her eyebrows, then stepped in properly, looking all around.

“What do you think?” Callum asked, looking almost nervous about it, and she shook her head at him.

“I think that this is about six times the size of my room,” she said, dryly, still inspecting the surroundings. She’d seen some of it through his lightcatcher, of course, but it was really something to see for herself. The slanted walls cut a lot of space, and it certainly wasn’t as wide as the entirety of the lower floors, but…

He laughed sheepishly and stepped in after her, leaving the door open. “Er, yeah, it’s…one of the bigger rooms in the house,” he said, modestly. “But that’s a good thing, since all of us pile in here for gaming every week.”

She looked across at his computer desk. It was…expansive. “Because you’ve got the computers?” she guessed, spotting an altogether sleeker and tidier unit that she thought was a human one, connected to a hilariously bulky monitor.

“Pretty much,” he agreed. “We’ve got one downstairs too, but mine’s the only one that can handle the newer games. Or, you know, human computer games.”

She glanced at the other half of the room. “Bet the space doesn’t hurt for all of that, either.” He looked over inquisitively, and she waved at the five entire standing easels populating that side of the room, most of which hosting a canvas of some kind. There was also a broad desk that was currently covered in loose paper, and a couple of free-standing room dividers with drawings pinned all over them.

“Ha, yeah, it’s…pretty handy,” he agreed, and sort of loitered at her heels as she drifted over to one of the canvases, curious. It depicted the scene of a magical forest she’d never seen before, the bark of the trees strangely crystalline and the leaves glittering like glass. It was intricately detailed, and…she looked closer. The paint was still wet.

“Did you just finish this?” she asked, staring, and he cleared his throat.

“Er, yeah. It’s…not actually finished yet, I’ve still got to, er, add some details with metallics and luminescents, but…yeah.” He seemed to be waiting for something, looking oddly bashful, and after a second she realised why. He wanted to know what she thought.

“It’s beautiful, Callum,” she said honestly, solidly impressed by the sheer level of skill and detail in it. She wasn’t exactly an expert in art, but she could recognise a beautiful scene in a beautiful hand when she saw one. “How long did that even take?”

He practically preened, beaming at her as she glanced back. “I’m not sure, actually,” he admitted, so cheerful that it made her a little flustered to look at him. “I get sort of caught up when I’m drawing, or painting, so I lose track of time. Makes it hard to count the hours. Something like this, though…” He inspected the canvas critically. “I don’t know, maybe forty hours? Fifty? Something like that.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “Wow. And you still have time for gaming?”

He snickered. “Well, I don’t do it all at once,” he said reasonably. “Usually I have a few paintings going at once, so I can work on one while the other one is drying, or something. I sketch a lot more than I paint, and that’s much faster, but…yeah, I only draw for a few hours a day, probably.”

“’Only’,” Rayla muttered, shaking her head. Though, really, it was pretty similar to the sorts of hours she put in with training every day, so she could relate. Curious, she left the painting of the glassy forest and went to the next easel, smiling reflexively at it. This one held a lovingly-detailed painting of the pygmy gryphon she’d just met, yellow eyes bright and feathers puffed up in a happy rouse. He seemed to have used metallic paints to evoke the iridescence; the feathers were all stupidly detailed.

The third easel contained a painting of Nihatasi and Kassa, both of them grinning, one of Kassa’s arms around the smaller elf’s shoulders and a wing slung around her middle. “They asked to keep that one,” Callum informed, from just beside her.

“I can see why,” Rayla muttered, eyebrows raised. It was a very cheerful scene, and beautiful besides; the lighting depicted intense afternoon sun that seemed to leave the two elves glowing, glittering in particular on their horns and Nihatasi’s jewellery.

“They wanted something of the two of them, and I was painting it anyway, so.” He shrugged. “Why not?”

“Do you paint people a lot?” Rayla asked, still looking at it.

“Sometimes,” he tipped a hand back and forth. “I draw people a lot more than I paint them. But, yeah, sometimes. And this-“ he indicated the canvas. “They both looked so happy, and it was just…nice. And with the light, and everything…it just seemed nice to paint.”

She processed the implications of that for a second. “You painted that from memory?”

He grinned. “Yeah. I have, er, really good memory for visual stuff.”

Thinking of all the memorisation of runes she’d had to do just to be able to identify the function of various arrays, Rayla shook her head. “Bet that comes in handy for remembering all your spell runes.”

“You have no idea,” he agreed, looking very proud about it, and followed her eyes to the last canvas. “Er, yeah, there’s…not really much on there yet.”

Rayla nodded, tilting her head. It seemed to mostly just be laying out the lighting, for now; he’d painted what looked like a night-time gradient, with half-saturated blues and purples in the shadows, and some sort of pale blue glow from the side. “Is it new?”

“Started working on it a couple days ago, I guess,” he said, looking a bit furtive about it. “Still deciding what I want it to be.”

She glanced at him sharply. That was a lie. How bizarre, that he was so endlessly mysterious about everything, but something like this ended up being his first direct mistruth to her. Was it a particularly important painting, or something? Related to one of his various secrets? “Maybe you can show it to me,” she suggested, eyes narrowed. “When you’ve worked on it a bit more.”

Strangely, he flushed a little. “…Yeah,” he agreed at last, sounding resigned. “I probably will.”

Rayla stared at him for a few long seconds, then sighed. That, at least, sounded like truth. “You really have a lot here,” she said, instead of pressing the matter. She waved at the various boards studded with sketches. “If I didn’t know better, I’d look at all this and think you were an art student.”

Callum smiled, lopsided. “I get that a lot, actually.” He stepped up to one of the boards, pinning down a corner of paper that seemed to have gone astray. “Understandable, though. No one looks at a human and thinks ‘he could be a mage student’, right?”

“I didn’t,” she agreed, thinking back to their first meeting and flushing. “Keep meaning to ask you about that, actually.”

He grinned, looking pleased at the topic. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She glanced at him side-long. “How-“ she stopped, trying to find the best way to phrase it. “How does it work? How did you even end up getting started with magic?”

Callum considered her for a moment, smiling thoughtfully, and then reached into the wide front pocket of his hoodie. The thing was baggy, sure, but even so she was surprised at the size of the thing he withdrew: a large orb, crackling with magical energy beneath the glassy surface. A primal stone? “I started learning magic with this when I was pretty young,” he said, repositioning it in his hand with easy familiarity. “Fourteen, I think. We didn’t have a lot of spells to work with, so I just sort of practiced those for a while.” he hesitated, so briefly she barely caught it. “Maybe a year and a half later, we got in contact with Navessa – Kassa’s mother. My family had some connections with her, and she’s a thaumatology and thaumaturgy professor, so…”

“…You asked her for tips?” Rayla guessed, and he laughed. He looked, just for a moment, a little uncomfortable; in the next second, it was gone, smoothed away with what seemed like long practice.

“Kinda?” At her look, he smiled ruefully. “What actually happened was that I moved to Gullcrest to…sort of, study with her. As her apprentice. Mostly that meant I helped her with her work and stuff, grading assignments, that kind of thing. But I learned magic, too.”

She stared. She didn’t have to be a truthfinder to tell that he’d left a lot out, there. “…That’s how you ended up living with Kassa’s family?”

“Yeah. I’ve been in Gullcrest ever since.” He shrugged again, and put the primal stone away. It seemed to be more of an involved process than just putting it into his hoodie pocket – he seemed to be fastening something. Maybe there was some sort of holster for it, to stop it from falling out? It would make sense, for an item as rare and valuable as a primal stone. “Last year, Navessa said I could go onto a master’s course properly, so…here I am.”

Rayla processed that for several moments. He made it all sound so normal and boring, but…it wasn’t. It really wasn’t. And – how, exactly, had he gone from ‘learning a few spells with a primal stone’ to ‘I, a child, am moving to another country to live in a city full of elves as a full-time mage apprentice’? Was it normal for humans, to send their kids off like that?

She thought back to the handful of inferences she’d made about his upbringing – namely, that it had been wealthy and probably quite lonely – and then tried to put that together with ‘sent away at age fifteen for actual years’. A second later, the familiar ache of magestrain twinged at her, and she cut the train of thought off with a wince. Too much, apparently, when she’d intentionally worn herself out earlier.

“Something wrong?” he asked, noticing, and she shook her head.

“Nah, it’s fine.” She glanced at him, and to change the subject, asked “What sort of spells do you know?”

Callum opened his mouth, hand reflexively lifting, then paused. Ruefully, he said “I was about to demonstrate something, but then I realised that wouldn’t be the best idea.” She lifted an eyebrow, and he elaborated “Well, I mostly know Sky magic, right? Not exactly a good idea indoors.”

Well, that made sense. She had the impression he was leaving something out, though. “You said once you’d cast some Moon-magic, though.”

“I don’t have another primal stone,” Callum said, lips twitching, like he knew that was what she was thinking. “Just this one. But I’ve used someone else’s before, and used normal Moon-magic artefacts as sources too. Also some Ocean – and actually, pretty recently, I had a chance to try out some Sun spells? That was cool.” He blinked, as though remembering something, and gestured her over to his desk. When she reached it he was brushing a weird cube with a glowing Sky rune off of one of the books there, and opening it to one of the later pages. “The Crown of Summer,” he announced, proudly, showing her the drawing. “It was apparently a royal artefact for a really, really old dragon once? And now it belongs to the University of Lux Marea.”

Rayla spared a glance for the cube, upon disparate sides of which the symbols of Moon and Sky had now both lit up, then turned her attention to the drawing. It seemed to depict a vast golden headpiece, far too large for any elven or human head, of which the central jewel was a Sun primal stone. He’d drawn it in pencil and then apparently gone over in full-opacity inks, and the colours were intense. “You visited the university?”

“A month or so back, yeah. Navessa called in a favour.” He smiled, then turned the page back. Rayla had seen pictures of Lux Marea before, and recognised the scene: its famous temple surrounding the artificial Sunforge, whose magic powered the entire city. He’d done most of it in charcoal and then outlined the gleaming lines of magical circuitry in gold…which was, actually, pretty accurate to the colour scheme of the city. It was very striking. “I did a lot of drawing. It’s a gorgeous city.”

Carefully, Rayla reached out to the corner of the page, glancing at him questioningly. He hesitated, then nodded, and she started turning the pages back, looking at picture after picture of the coastal Sunfire city. The streets, an enormous fountain, what looked like the university…all darkly shaded, and lined with gold. He really was insanely talented, wasn’t he?

She was half-way through turning the page again when she heard something new, and paused, listening.

The front door had opened, and there were voices going back and forth. Kassa, and…someone familiar. She frowned, tilting her head to the open doorway.

“Hear something?” Callum asked, plainly meaning it as a joke, but she snorted and nodded.

“Yes, actually. Someone just arrived, I think?” She listened, brow furrowing deeper.

That was…‘Soren’, right? The guy with the weirdly familiar voice who’d been hanging outside the game society room? The same Soren that Pava had mentioned earlier?

Right now, he was asking where Callum was. The answer, predictably, was ‘in his room, with the new girl’. There seemed to be a very long pause after that, and Rayla went still, listening, certain somehow that this…mattered, in some way she wasn’t certain of. There was something going on, here. She found herself tense and didn’t know why.

Then, so abruptly loud that she winced at the change in volume, the new voice called up the stairs: “Hey, Callum! You alive up there, buddy?”

Beside her, Callum flushed and opened his mouth. Rayla got her hands over her ears just in time to shield them from him yelling back “I’m fine!”

“Okay! Good!” With that, the newcomer downstairs seemed to filter into the living room, muttering to the others too indistinctly for her to discern from here. He sounded annoyed.

“…We’d probably better go down, soon,” Callum said regretfully. “Soren will be…uh…well, he’ll. Want to see me?”

Rayla stared at him flatly, for long enough that he started to fidget awkwardly. “You’re being so suspicious right now, you know,” she told him, finally too exasperated with all the blatant secret-keeping to hold it in. And besides, she…thought they were friends now. Right? Friends were allowed to call each other out on their nonsense. Or so she thought.

Sure enough, he looked embarrassed more than anything else. “Sorry?”

She sighed. “Well, whatever. Best put the sketchbook away, then.”

He nodded sadly, like he’d been looking forward to her seeing more of it, and closed it up. “I’d love to show you through everything,” he said, sounding a little wistful. “But Soren’s back, and everyone else will be here soon. I kind of wish-“ he stopped abruptly, then coughed, and glanced at her cautiously. “I mean. You can come over again sometime? Not…just for a group thing, you know.”

As tired as she was getting of all the obfuscation twinging at her senses, she couldn’t quite help the pleasant flip-flop her stomach performed at that. He looked so hopeful, just from wanting to invite her over. “What, do you not get to show off your art to new people much?” she asked dryly, to distract herself from what her feelings were doing, and he let out a surprised laugh.

“I – no, honestly, I get to do that a lot?” He offered, amused. “A lot of customers ask what kind of art I do, when I tell them I make most of the designs. And I’ve usually got at least one sketchbook on me, so.”

Her lips twitched, even despite the slightly mortifying reminder of his job. “And you’re not worried about getting bits of horn all over your drawings?”

“I wait until after the messy parts, thanks,” Callum said, with great dignity, though he seemed to be fighting not to laugh again.

Rayla shook her head, amused, and reached out to pat him on the arm. “If you say so.” She straightened, and nodded questioningly towards his open door. He followed her intent without having to ask and stepped automatically towards it, waiting for her to follow, but hesitated at the threshold.

“So, er…” He attempted, awkward and hopeful in a now-familiar way, trying to find words.

She thought she knew what he was trying to ask, but pulled on her truthfinding just to be sure: though it hurt a little, overuse didn’t seem to have done anything to its fidelity; it helpfully started making connections between about a hundred tiny details she’d overlooked or ignored, confirming that she was right, and also that he very much cared about her opinion on his art, and that he was excited to spend more time with her-

She hastily closed off the magic, letting it ebb back into passivity.

“…Ask on Sunbeam ahead of time, alright?” she managed eventually, feeling the tips of her ears heat. “I’ve got training most days, but aside from that…I’m usually free.”

He looked so pleased at that response that she had to hurry ahead of him, going for the steep stairs in an effort to prevent herself from flushing more noticeably….or, at the very least, getting it under control before she had to look at him again. It worked well enough, so by the time he’d climbed down too they proceeded downstairs together without any fuss.

Kassa’s cooking had evidently advanced enough for there to be some unfairly delicious smells emanating from the kitchen; Rayla could hear her voice with the others in the main room though, so evidently whatever was going on with it now didn’t need her supervision. Callum looked weirdly nervous as he approached the door anyway, and called “Hi, Soren” in a resigned sort of way as he passed into the living room ahead of her. Rayla followed.

Everyone except Nihatasi seemed to be here, including the gryphon; Pava was still buried in computing, but the computing itself had migrated to the table in the conversation pit, where Kazi and Kassa (and the gryphon in her lap) were both sat, in addition to…the ‘new’ face. Who wasn’t so new after all.

Rayla stopped short.

“You!” she exclaimed, pointing accusatively at the offending party before she even knew what she was doing.

All conversation stopped, and every set of eyes turned her way, including Soren’s. He blinked up at her and broke into a wide grin. “Hey, it’s Stabby Moonshadow Girl!” he crowed delightedly, already half pushing himself up to turn to face her more fully.

Kazi’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, my.”

“What?” Callum asked from beside her, sounding thrown, but she wasn’t looking at him. Instead, she was staring at Soren, incensed at the memory of their first interaction, half-burning from remembered irritation. She knew she’d recognised the voice and name from somewhere, and of course it would end up being him. “You know each other? Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Probably because he only knew her as ‘Stabby Moonshadow Girl’, I’m guessing,” Kassa supplied from her seat in the pit, looking suddenly very entertained.

Callum turned and looked at her, and finally she looked back at him. She found him gawping at her with sudden realisation. “Wait, wait, wait – Rayla, you’re Stabby Moonshadow Girl?”

Rayla whirled to Soren again. “Have you really been calling me that?” she demanded, fingers twitching for a blade. It was an understandable reflex, given the context she usually met this guy in.

He looked utterly unbothered, still grinning broadly. “Sure I have. I couldn’t remember your name, what else was I going to call you?” He patted the seat beside him, as cocky as he always was, and just as mocking-

She stopped, thrown. Something was twinging at her, the echo of magestrain, like she was on the edge of putting some facts together. She reached for it a little more deliberately, and…

…oh.

“Take a seat, would you?” He invited, grinning in a way she’d always interpreted as mocking before, but…it really wasn’t, was it? Here, in his home, surrounded by his friends…she could see that. “I’ve got to hear how this happened.”

“Me too,” Callum said, sounding stunned. He side-eyed her, eyes wide. “I’ve heard about you, Rayla.”

She folded her arms. “Oh, really?”

“Duh,” Pava said, not looking up from his technomancy. “Soren never shuts up about any of his matches. He gives play-by-plays, sometimes.”

Kazi nodded, watching this all with a quiet and keen interest. “He certainly does.”

“Sit down, already, my neck is getting sore from looking up at you like this,” Kassa insisted, and waved at them aggressively until they started moving. Callum sat down next to Soren, and Rayla paused before taking the space next to Callum. She’d barely settled when another inquisitive face poked past the doorframe.

“What’s this I hear about Rayla being Stabby Moonshadow Girl?” Nihatasi demanded, looking thrilled.

Kassa pointed at her. “Food.”

She made a face. “Come on, it’s curry, it’s not going to burn if I leave it for five minutes!”

Undaunted, Kassa kept pointing. “Either go watch the food or put the stove out and come back. No unattended fires in my kitchen, we’ve been over this.”

Nihatasi made a face at her but obliged, vanishing through the doorway. “We do have fireproofing wards, you know!” she called over her shoulder.

“We don’t have food-burning-proofing wards, though,” Kassa countered loudly, then turned back to the rest of them. “So, Stabby Moonshadow Girl, right?”

“Right,” Soren agreed, looking very pleased with the whole thing, and apparently entirely unaffected by the glare Rayla shot him at hearing that epithet again.

“I can’t believe you’re Stabby Moonshadow Girl,” Callum said to her, still sounding dazed, and she glared at him this time.

“Would people stop calling me that?”

“I mean, you’re looking the part right now,” Kassa pointed out, unruffled.

“Kassa,” Callum complained at her, then turned back to Rayla, apologetic. “Sorry, it’s just – he really has talked about you a lot, you know, you’re his favourite bellator on the university team.”

Rayla blinked, thrown. “I am?”

“Well, yeah,” Soren said easily. “You’re the best they’ve got, right? Your captain’s a pretty good leader, and you’ve got some good mages, but your melee people kind of suck aside from you, you know.”

She had to admit, if only to herself, that he was right. She’d never thought very much of the close-range fighting abilities of most of her teammates, and her sound defeat of them every time in practice probably hadn’t helped how intimidated they all seemed of her. “They’re getting better,” she defended, feebly.

“Yeah, kinda,” he agreed. “Pretty obvious they don’t really train much outside of their bellatorium though.”

Rayla sighed. It was, in fact, something that tended to irritate her. “True enough,” she admitted sourly.

“You kept talking about training,” Callum said, still apparently caught up on the ‘Rayla is the same person as Stabby Moonshadow Girl’ thing. “I kept meaning to ask, but – you’re a bellator.”

“She sure is. Close combat, infiltration, extraction, counter-espionage, and assassination specialisation,” Soren offered helpfully, putting some bizarre emphasis in there all the while he lifted his eyebrows and stared at Callum like he was making a point. Callum reddened, shoulders hunching a little. “You know, in case you forgot.”

“I get it,” he muttered, sounding embarrassed.

“Uhuh.” Soren seemed unconvinced.

Rayla, meanwhile, was more occupied with- “You can list off all my specialisations off the top of your head?”

“’Course he can. You’re his favourite opponent.” Kassa unfolded one wing and stretched it out indolently on the floor behind the pit, grinning. “You should’ve heard him after you single-handedly won your team that last game.”

“He was pretty enthusiastic,” Callum muttered, sneaking glances at her as though still trying to reconcile her with…apparently…everything he’d heard from Soren. Rayla wondered confusedly if she should feel flattered.

“How did it even-“ she began only to be cut off by a voice from the next room.

“Waaaiiiit!” Nihatasi wailed from the kitchen, plaintive. “I want to hear!”

Kassa rolled her eyes, pushed herself up, and climbed out of the pit, calling “Oh, go on then, you overgrown glitterbug, I’ll watch the bloody food.”

In short order, one Skywing elf was exchanged for the other, and Nihatasi sat bright-eyed and bouncing into the seat her girlfriend had vacated. She didn’t manage to inherit the gryphon, who migrated to Kazi’s considerably calmer lap and curled up in a glittering circle of feathers. “I can’t believe you already knew each other!” She crowed, looking absolutely delighted at the prospect. “Like – you already knew Soren and you met Callum before you ever came to the game meet-up too, and it’s wonderful! The winds really all blew here, huh?”

“So it seems,” Kazi agreed, with a small amused smile, and patted Nihatasi on the shoulder. There was a pause in the conversation, and Rayla realised after a second that they were waiting for her to speak.

“…What?” she demanded, still off-balance and bristling with it. She could feel her shoulders hunching, even if only slightly.

“Tell us the story?” Callum implored, settling a hand on her arm. She looked at it, bewildered. “We’ve only ever heard it from Soren before.”

“What’s there to tell?” she returned, posture loosening a little as she glanced side-long at him. “It was a match we should have had in the bag, but then he-“ she pointed at Soren. “-turned around and bumped into me at the exact wrong moment.”

Soren looked delighted by the statement. “Yeah, it was great, wasn’t it?” he said proudly. “Man, you should’ve stomped us, we had no idea how to find you. I was just waiting for us to lose, and then…” He waved grandly towards her, demonstratively. She made a face back at him.

“How did you find me?” She pressed, with a little more intensity than she’d intended. It had been an incredibly frustrating defeat, and even nearly two months later it made her fingers feel weapon-twitchy to think about. “Was there some trick to it? Or was it really just…” She searched for the words, eyebrow twitching.

“Just total, crazy, dumb luck,” Soren claimed happily. “Literally just tripped over you by accident.”

“Ugh,” Rayla expressed, disgustedly. It had been a perfect set-up. There weren’t many matches where a stealth specialist could really shine, but this had been one of them, ideal for her skills, and yet…within metres of the objective, Soren had paced to the left at precisely the wrong moment. “I don’t know if that makes it more or less annoying.”

“I guess that depends on if you’d be more annoyed by being beaten because of an accident or because the other team actually had better bellators?” Nihatasi reasoned, still leaning forwards with keen interest. “Which is it?”

Rayla thought. “I don’t know. It being an accident, I suppose? If he’d won because he did spot me…that’d have just meant I needed more training.”

“Everyone thought I could see through Moonshadow illusions for like, weeks after, it was super funny.” Soren grinned. “I mean, it’d be cool if I could, but…”

“You’re not a mage, though, right?” Pava spoke up unexpectedly, and she blinked across at him. She hadn’t thought he was paying any attention. “You said you weren’t, at game night.”

She was confused for a second before she remembered that he apparently wanted to recruit an illusionist for some reason. “Oh. Yeah, I’m not.”

Soren nodded, as if vindicated. “I thought so. Everyone keeps saying that you’ve just got an unlisted speciality, but – I dunno, from what I’ve seen, people who’re illusionists that good are kind of bad at everything else. And your specialisations list is already stupid long.”

Callum was frowning. “But – wait, if you really don’t know any spells, how did you camouflage? The way Soren talks about you, you just – go basically invisible, right?”

It was then that Kazi, who had been listening and watching quietly the whole time, uttered a satisfied “Ah,” as if in revelation. When she glanced over at them, they were smiling knowingly. “That is quite the rare talent, Rayla. Was it hard to train?”

After a short, startled pause, Nihatasi was next to catch on. “Wait, was that your Moonshadow form?”

“Knew it,” Soren declared, victoriously, as everyone’s eyes went to Rayla. She went stiff immediately, not particularly comfortable with all the scrutiny.

Callum’s eyes were particularly wide. “You can take your primal magic form in daylight? That’s…”

“It’s not that rare,” she muttered, after a moment. “I know a lot of people who can do it, back home.” Granted, not many of them could manage it as close to New Moon as she could, but…

“Still.” He was watching her with interest, as though he thought she might burst into shadows at any second.

Rayla snorted at him. “I’m not going to do it now, you know, or I’ll really give myself magestrain,” she told him. Sure enough, he looked a little woebegone, as though he really had been hoping for a demonstration. She shook her head. “Besides, most Moonshadow elves can learn to do it, if they really try. It’s not like it’s…I don’t know, truthfinding.” It was the first thing that came to mind, naturally enough, but kind of embarrassing in context.

“Huh,” Callum said, like she’d piqued his interest. “Didn’t know that. I guess Scion of Shadow doesn’t know everything.”

She blinked. “Scion of Shadow is a game.”

“With a Moonshadow elf protagonist,” Nihatasi put in, helpfully. “Written by Moonshadow elves. And the game says that only the most magically powerful elves can normally do anything Moon-magic in sunlight.”

“Well, it’s wrong. It’ll just give you a lot of magestrain if you’re too far from Full Moon.” Rayla crossed her arms, and debated speaking further. In the end, she sighed and added “Mind you, it’s…not hugely well known, outside of the hidden groves? The elves that wrote it must’ve been outsiders.”

“Huh,” said Callum again, like he was still mulling over that.

“So, how would you defend against someone who can do what you do?” Soren pressed, after a pause. “If you don’t mind giving tips to someone on another team, I mean. We really had no clue how to find you.”

Rayla glanced at him and snorted. “Get better mages,” she said, lips twitching. “Or a Moonshadow elf. Moonshadow eyes will spot Moonshadowed people. And Sun-magic cast around an area will pretty much strip the camouflage right off. If you’re really out of mages, just put as many lights around as you can – that way, you could maybe spot the distortion in the shadows.”

He nodded, looking weirdly serious for a moment. “Good to know. Thanks. You’re right – we really need a regular battle-mage or two. Callum plays sometimes, but only for fun, and he’s not a Sun-mage anyway, so. Eh.”

Rayla glanced at Callum again, startled. It was one thing to be capable of magic, but another thing entirely to be good enough and fast enough to use it in a fight. “I’ve never seen you at a match before,” she said, a little appraisingly, tilting her head to evaluate him. She’d first met him as her ceracurist, and had been too embarrassed to look too closely. Then, the second time, she’d still been a bit too occupied. And today – well.

In the end, she hadn’t really put much thought to assessing him as a combatant. But…

It wasn’t exactly easy to tell, sitting next to him, with him all bundled up in a baggy hoodie and loose trousers and the like, but…while she didn’t quite remember him moving like a fighter, she thought he wasn’t completely graceless either. Hm.

He coloured a little, picking at his sleeves. “Well. I work at weekends? Usually? And your teams’ crossover matches are always on a Sunday, so…”

“You should spar with him sometime,” Soren invited, on Callum’s behalf, looking very cheerful about it. “He’s fine with the magic, but I could use someone else to help me beat some weapons stuff into him. He’s kind of useless once someone gets into melee range.”

“I am not,” Callum complained, going a little redder, and elbowing Soren in the side. There was a metallic clinking at the impact which made Rayla blink, and then straighten, staring over at him. She evaluated for a second, then another, and then nodded to herself. Soren was wearing an armoured vest under his shirt. And…she glanced across…yes, there was a sheathed sword that she recognised from the Honour Games matches, well within reach in the pile of technomantics that Pava was still elbows-deep in.

Interesting.

“He’s getting better,” Soren allowed. “You should’ve seen him when we were kids. Now that was bad.”

Rayla’s eyes flickered between them for a moment, remembering that Callum had said Soren was a childhood friend. Her arcanum twinged again, and she did her best to ignore it. Apparently, driving herself to magestrain would not help her be less twitchy; it just meant she’d have to deal with it aching every time she noticed something. Ugh. “I’m fine with sparring sometime,” she said instead of trying to deduce anything, shooting both of them another appraising look. “I don’t get to do much sparring outside of the bellatorium, these days. My teammates…” It seemed rude to say ‘my teammates are all slackers’, but it was only the truth. “Well. They…” Rayla was, as it happened, not good at diplomacy.

“They never train, huh?” Soren said knowingly, and she sighed in a resigned sort of way. “Yeah, I’d go nuts if my teammates never sparred outside of regular bellatorium times. But-“ His face scrunched up as he looked at her. “I don’t get it. If you were looking for people to spar with, why did you never come when I offered?”

“Oh boy,” said Pava, in an undertone.

Rayla stared blankly. “What?”

“After our matches!” Soren pointed at her, looking a little put-off now, as if he’d been profoundly wronged. “That first time! I asked you to come out with our team afterwards! And the next time, I asked you if you wanted to spar sometime. And you just went like,” he mimed a scathing glare for a second, pointing at his face. “And walked off.”

All eyes went to her. “I am curious about that one,” Nihatasi said, tilting her head. “Because, like, you fighty types are normally all about training, right? First time, he just figured you didn’t want to hang out socially, so he asked about sparring next, but that was a no too. And then all your teammates said you never hang out with anyone so we all figured you were, like, some kind of super-solitary Moonshadow warrior or something.”

Awkward. For a moment, Rayla seriously considered the merits of turning invisible and disappearing into the rafters. She averted her eyes and folded her arms, and after a prolonged moment where everyone was waiting for her to talk, she eventually admitted “I thought he was taking the piss. You know, mocking me. I didn’t think he-” She changed her address and directed the last part at Soren. “-You, were serious.”

Callum, who was closest, blinked at her. “Oh,” he said, in tones of great understanding.

Soren, albeit a second or two of intense thought later, also said “Oh,” in pretty much exactly the same tone. “…Yeah, okay, that makes sense.”

Rayla eyed him suspiciously. “It does?”

“I kind of have resting asshole face,” Soren claimed, apparently completely unbothered by this assertion. Pava, still elbows-deep in wiring, snorted. “And voice. I find it hard to tell how I come across sometimes. You are not the first person I accidentally pissed off that way.”

Now she was wincing. “I didn’t mean…”

He shrugged. “Nah, it’s cool. Not your problem, just something I’m trying to work on.”

Rayla couldn’t quite agree. All it would have taken was looking a little closer, and then her truthfinding would have told her perfectly well that he hadn’t been mocking her. But she’d been tired, and hadn’t been in the mood to tolerate what her first read said was taunting after such a frustrating defeat, so she just…hadn’t. And she’d been thinking of him as a particularly irritating dickhead of a human ever since.

Nihatasi, though, seemed to have relaxed, and the rest of the audience too. “Well, I’m glad you don’t just hate Soren, then,” she announced, at Rayla. “That would be awkward, considering.” She didn’t say what it was considering, but Soren nodded sagely.

“You are better than you used to be,” Callum said to him, encouragingly, from the lofty position of the person in the room who’d probably known him longest. “You don’t say anything that’s accidentally, er, jerk-ish. Not unless you’re trying, at least.”

Soren grinned, and slung an arm around his shoulder. “Thanks, honeybun. Appreciate it,” he said, and Rayla glanced sharply at them as Callum flushed red.

“Soren,” Callum hissed, eyes darting to her.

His grin widened. “Yeah, snookums?” For all that he’d claimed to be ‘working on’ his tone, this was very blatantly intentional taking-the-piss. Friendly, but definitely purposeful.

“Don’t call me that,” he insisted, with a spot of bright red on either cheek.

Soren’s hand, still slung over Callum’s shoulder, patted him. “If that’s what you want, babe.” He received a grumpy, embarrassed noise in response.

The thing was – sure, for a second, at those obvious over-the-top pet names, at that affectionate contact, Rayla had looked and them and briefly wondered if, well, there might be something going on between the two of them. But it had taken all of a second to look at Soren’s face and at the amused expressions of the surrounding friend group to conclude that this was probably an old and well-rehearsed joke. She found her lips twitching, and that ought to have been all, except…

Callum kept glancing at her, red-faced, out of the corners of his eyes, like he was abruptly very concerned about her reaction. Rayla exhaled silently, and did her very best not to interpret that clue.

She was, just about, succeeding at that. Throughout the whole proceeding conversation, Rayla agreed to arrange to meet with Soren for sparring and see how it went, some Skywing elf named Venanin showed up and disappeared into a module-ridden corner to enthusiastically play around in wires with Pava, and Callum stayed suspiciously quiet. Eventually, Kassa poked her head in the door and announced to the room at large that food was ready, and most of the group decamped to the kitchen at once. All except for Callum, who seemed to be lingering awkwardly with intent to say something to her.

Rayla cast her eyes heavenward, managed not to sigh, and said “Yes, Callum?”

He fidgeted, then said, haltingly but earnestly, “Er. You know. Me and Soren, we’re not. Um.”

She closed her eyes, very briefly. “I know, Callum,” she told him, resigned, and he blinked at her.

“Er. You do? Because – I don’t know what you’ve heard, but a lot of people say-“

Rayla had not heard anything in particular about Callum and Soren, mostly because she didn’t ever socialise with anyone, or spend time around places where people might be gossiping, but even so: “I know,” she repeated, fighting to keep the heat from her cheeks. She pointed aggressively at the door. “Now, it’s dinner, isn’t it? Go get food.”

“But-“

“Food,” she repeated, insistently, and he finally obliged, smiling bashfully at her as he went.

She lingered in the empty living room for a moment after he’d gone. She couldn’t stay long, she knew, or he’d poke his head back through the door looking for her. But for that moment, she sighed, rubbed at her temples, and resigned herself to the fact that there were only so many obvious clues she could determinedly ignore before her magic put it all together for her anyway.

Callum liked her. There was really no denying it. It had been hard enough to ignore already, but now, with him very obviously going out of his way to make sure she knew that the display earlier was not indicative of him having a boyfriend…

Rayla, who hardly had any idea what to do with a regular friend, let alone one who was interested in her, lingered for another long moment to collect her nerves, and then for another to squash down the confused but excited butterflies in her gut, and then finally went for the door.

She’d figure out what she thought about this all later. Much later. But for now…

Well. The food did smell pretty amazing.

End chapter.

This social engagement will extend into next chapter; they still got gaming etc to do.

Yeah, so the truthfinding thing isn’t something I originally planned when starting this story, but I did already have truthfinders worldbuilt in piaj, and then I realised somewhere along the line in this fic that I was kind of writing Rayla as one, and then I realised that was Very Plot Significant, so now I’ve turned it up a lot.

Also this is probably the fastest burn I’ve ever written, goddamn.

So, worldbuilding:

Truthfinding: a very rare Moonshadow elf magical ability, inborn. An untrained truthfinder won’t show any obvious signs of the talent, and it generally takes a trained one to spot another. Historically, truthfinders almost universally become Priests or Druids in various Moonshadow faiths, particularly the Lunar Dichotomy, where all Priests of Moon’s Light or Shadow tend to be varyingly talented truthfinders. After extensive training, a truthfinder will have magically augmented intuition that allows them to make connections and leaps of logic that go beyond the limits of normal thought; at high levels it can even be used to uncover information that the truthfinder rightly shouldn’t be able to know, simply because it fits into the whole. This is a staggeringly useful ability in just about any profession, but the sheer amount of training it takes to get one to that point makes them very, very scarce. You’ll see a whole lot more on truthfinders in this story. (piaj)

Magestrain: kind of like the magical version of muscle fatigue, acquired by doing too much magic for one’s personal tolerance. Much like physical exercise, practice will increase the threshold, and some people naturally have lower or higher magestrain thresholds than others. (piaj)

Pygmy gryphon: have approximately the temperament of a cat, sleep just as much, and are bred as companion animals and for pest control. They keep small territories and don’t often fly except when hunting, or in very short bursts to navigate a room. Some pygmy gryphon breeds have been selectively bred to have extremely decorative iridescent feathers. They’re a popular pet in many Gullcrest homes due to the need to control the local eponymous gull populations. Pygmy gryphons predominantly prey on flying animals such as bats and birds.

Setaseta: a Brevili word used to indicate that something is really, really sharp. The word ‘seta’ itself means ‘sharp’ and also ‘blade’. (Brevili conlang)

Lux Marea: a Sunfire elf city on the northern coast, situated on a cliff edge. It bears an artificial, smaller version of the Sunforge at its centre, the engineering of which is considered a magical marvel. It supplies the magic for the city, and is maintained by the temple. (This city was originally created for an unreleased fanfiction.)

Honour Games: a martial sport conducted in teams, whose games vary in objective, structure, and win condition. The sport is extremely culturally significant and are played by elves and humans from hobbyists all the way up to professional career-bellators. Rayla is a member of the university bellatorium, which means she plays matches against other universities and also casual matches against the city’s general bellatorium. Soren is a member of the city bellatorium, which includes a team or two of casual players but has training times set aside for professionals as well.

#rayllum #tdp fic #tdp rayla #tdp callum #tdp soren #tdp kazi #the ceracurist #ceracurist au

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sunstone-nerding · 4 years ago

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They are! @arnieb95 I didn't take a close look until you mentioned them.

Hey @tenspontaneite , it looks like this Skywing might have applied some horn tints and/or carving like you put in your story "The Ceracurist"! 😃

A NAUGHTY BOY

#the dragon prince #tdp #skywing elves #tox #tales of xadia #tales of xadia ttrpg #tdp ttrpg

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tenspontaneite · 3 years ago

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The Ceracurist (Chapter 3/?)

Even after these past months, she wasn’t yet used to it. Another Full Moon spent alone.

(Chapter length: 10.4k. ao3 link)

---

“Did you go to the game night?” Was Ethari’s first question when she called him the next day.

She rolled her eyes at him. “Yes, Ethari.”

He looked delighted. “Did you make friends?”

She hesitated, thinking about it. “…Well, I did beat them all at Antiquitora,” she said eventually. “And you were right, they did appreciate that.” She paused, and added “I’m probably going back, I think.”

She spent the next ten minutes having details pried out of her so warmly and kindly it hardly felt like an interrogation at all. Ethari was good at that. Finally she secured her escape via the need to leave for training, and was farewelled with considerably less fretting than usual. When the call dropped, she was about to shut down the Sunbeam module entirely, but then-

New Contact Requests, said the alert in the corner. Rayla blinked, nonplussed, and opened it, already having a decent idea of what she’d find. Sure enough, there were three new requests from codes she recognised: Kazi, Nihatasi, and Callum. She lingered there for a while, feeling bizarrely overwhelmed, then finally accepted all three of them.

She didn’t linger by the computer, after that – she had training to get to. Rayla paused at the door to perform a final once-over of her armour, then grabbed her swords and left.

---

Rayla stumbled back into her room in late afternoon, covered in about three different kinds of mud and her body aching all-over in the aftermath of prolonged exertion. She spent the next two hours with rigid discipline: cleaning herself, cleaning her armour, checking her weapons. She cooked unenthusiastically and ate, then finally felt justified in utter collapse. She landed face-first into her bed and fell asleep immediately.

Three hours later, she woke to a stirring of magic in her veins, prickling over her skin, all the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. Slowly, she blinked her eyes open, and pushed herself up; every hint of soreness from training was completely gone. She turned her eyes to the window, staring at the Moon rising full and resplendent past the horizon. Something deep and instinctive in her delighted at the sight of it. But something else twisted, sharp with the pang of homesickness.

Even after these past months, she wasn’t yet used to it. Another Full Moon spent alone. She sighed, and tried not to think of the festivities that would surely be beginning back home. It was moonrise; Ethari and Runaan would be at the Circle by now. Had the dancing already started? With the Moon this high, it must have.

She stared unblinkingly out of the window, turning thoughts over and over in her head. It wasn’t right to be alone at Full Moon. It wasn’t right to spend it all indoors, either. She couldn’t do much about the first thing, but the second…

Silent, Rayla slipped outside. A few of her wingmates were out in the common room, chattering drunkenly with each other near the table. She blinked, slowly, and exhaled. When she passed, they didn’t see her; only started with surprise at the open and close of the door. She crept through the streets like a ghost, visiting each of the parks and training grounds in turn until she finally found one unoccupied: a small stand of well-kept trees, and a fountain that reflected the full body of the Moon in its burbling waters. It would do.

It was no Circle. There were no runes in the ground – nothing here that awaited the careful precision of the lunar dances, nothing that would light up at her passing. But it was better than nothing. Rayla pulled at the moonlight until she was nothing but shadows flickering in the shadows of the trees, and danced.

There were plenty of moondances that could be done alone, and she circled the fountain with all of them, one by one. A tracery of magic hummed in the air at her passing, whispers of light following her; magic summoned by her motions, without the guidance of a Circle’s shaping. Even formless and aimless, it was beautiful. So, for the pleasure of it, she spun through those motes of moonlight and held them flickering in the shadows of her skin; light and dark woven together.

When she was done, she felt…not joyous, maybe, or exhilarated, as a celebration back home might have left her. But she was satisfied. Calm, and a little less sad. With the Full Moon still high above her, its magic brimming in her veins, Rayla headed home once more.

She didn’t bother to hide herself this time, and when she came through the door and passed by the remaining wingmates still up and awake, they saw her perfectly well: skin night-dark, eyes glowing, the edges of her form blurring into the shadows. They were all of them Sunfire and Skywing, and went a little quiet as she went by them; she wondered if they’d ever seen one of her kind at Full Moon before. Somehow, she doubted it.

Finally, Rayla arrived at her door, disarmed its security, and closed it behind her. She sighed, standing for a moment in the moonlight through her window, and considered it. Sleep would be a lost cause for another few hours, probably. So, somewhat inevitably, she ended up checking the computer. Browsing the mageskein was probably the best way to kill a few hours, and it wasn’t like she had anything else to do, this time of night.

Except: her Sunbeam module was still on, humming inside its casing, and…when she looked, it had projected a few message alerts onto the screen. Hesitantly, she checked them.

One was from Ethari, wishing her a good Moon, and entreating her once again to visit a Circle for it. Somewhat belated, that. One was from Kazi, confirming the time of their rematch tomorrow, as well as the address. Nihatasi had sent another, packed with effusive praise for her gaming excellence, insistence that she return, and an offer to come by the house whenever she wanted. Rayla shook her head at that, reluctantly amused. It wasn’t as though she’d met many nomads before – not in a social setting, anyway – but so far, Nihatasi more than matched their reputation for being aggressively sociable.

The last message was from Callum, and she steadfastly pretended that she wasn’t any more interested in it than the rest. He��d cheerfully thanked her for coming to the game night, said he hoped she’d come again, and then made an inquiry about her gaming tastes. Did she play computer games? If so, which were her favourites?

With the slow, halting uncertainty of the socially awkward, Rayla responded to all of them except Ethari’s. Kazi’s was easy enough, she just had to say ‘thanks’ and ‘see you tomorrow’. The other two took more doing. To Nihatasi, she expressed her thanks, and her assurances that she intended to come to a game night again. She said nothing about the house visit. To Callum, she reiterated her intentions to return, and admitted that, yes, she did like computer games, but hadn’t had the opportunity to play many of them, for lack of the necessary modules or a computer with the right specifications.

Given the hour, she certainly didn’t expect any response, so she switched active modules to the mageskein to start browsing. News headlines on the home site vied for her attention: something about the outcome of the latest Katolis-Evenere expedition into the wastelands; the most recent public appearance of the Dragon Prince with his esteemed parents; a gossip piece about some Katolian royal’s birthday. She checked the second one for images, and sure enough, there he was: the young prince Azymondias, still tiny in comparison to his queen mother…and, in the background, a few Dragonguard standing at the ready. Rayla spotted her parents and smiled. She clicked to transfer the picture through its Sunbeam link and waited.

The other module hummed, her computer making distressed noises as it attempted juggling the inputs of Sunbeam and Mageskein at once. The unit at home wouldn’t have had any trouble, but this one…she sighed, and waited, and was eventually rewarded when her Sunbeam successfully imported the image and displayed it full-fidelity, with all the depth and nuance of lighting that a flat picture could never convey. She filed it away, and was about to switch back, when she saw the alert.

A new message. At this hour? It had to be at least two in the morning by now, surely. She checked her clock to be sure, and, yep. 2:14am. She eyed the icon with consternation, then opened it.

Callum had responded. She stared, brow furrowing as she read. Hey, glad to hear back from you! He opened, cheerfully failing to acknowledge the fact that it was currently stupidly late. The rest of it was perfectly normal too; commiserating about her lack of access to proper computing, commenting that yeah, I didn’t get to play any EX games until I moved here, and you know what WX graphics are like, and which ones did you get to play? Any I’d know about?

Rayla reread its entirety several times, mildly flummoxed. At Full Moon her emotions were all closer to the surface than usual, so there was an undeniable thread of glee in her chest about this unexpected late-night contact, but…well, she was curious. In her limited experience with the ways of other students, the only reasons a non-Moonshadow would be up this late would be ‘partying’ or ‘insomnia’. Or ‘last-minute coursework’, but that was unlikely to apply when term was already over. So: You’re up late, she wrote, without thinking about it, and sent it back without responding to any of his actual questions. She’d begun composing a belated second message, but apparently Callum was a lot speedier with typing than she was.

Haha, yeah, I kind of lost track of time. Gaming, incidentally. She thought he must be used to significantly faster systems and transfer times than she was, because that was the entirety of that message, and then he sent another one: What about you? What are you doing up?

Rayla blinked, then settled herself a little more comfortably in her chair, since it seemed like, well. Like there might be a conversation happening, here. She brought the keyboard further forward. It’s Full Moon, she responded to him, a little dryly. Her computer took its sweet time about sending the message, as usual.

Oh. It is? After a pause, during which he presumably looked out of a window or something, he said Huh. So it is. Does it keep you awake?

She paused. Kind of, she wrote, slowly, and then wasn’t quite sure how much more to divulge. Eventually, she wrote It’s kind of hard to sleep through when it’s still high. I’ll be okay in a couple hours.

That must be so cool, he answered, which seemed a weird thing to say to a statement of Moon-induced insomnia. I’ve used artefacts to cast moon-magic before, but it must feel totally different when you’ve got the arcanum. What’s it like?

Rayla stared at her screen. She recalled the implications of him being a mage student, and was suddenly brimming with curiosity. I don’t know, I’m not a mage, she wrote, and then paused. Do you cast a lot of artefact magic, or was that a one-time thing?

She probably should have just outright asked about the mage student thing, rather than trying to be cagey about it. He probably wouldn’t have minded. Except, that turned out to be unnecessary, because the next thing he wrote, as if it were perfectly natural and unsurprising, was Well, I’m doing a thaumaturgy / thaumatology masters, so I definitely cast a lot of magic, yeah. Then, while she was still gawping at that, he followed it up with Listen, do you want to call?

What? She sent back, astonished, still in the middle of trying to process the concept of a human thaumaturgy student. She couldn’t quite get her head around it. How did that even work?

It’s okay if you don’t, he clarified. But your Sunbeam seems to have kind of a lot of connection lag, so it’d probably be faster to talk, you know?

Rayla was, in fact, using a fairly old edition of the Sunbeam module, which did have to establish a new connection for every individual message it sent and received. It was what was cheapest, and the lag was just…an unavoidable side-effect. She called more often than she messaged anyway, so it was rarely relevant. Except, apparently, now. It’s two in the morning, Callum, she sent to him, bewildered.

And we’re both awake, he pointed out, as if it was perfectly reasonable to call someone you’d only met twice before in the middle of the night.

Her first instinct, fuelled by bemusement and social anxiety, was to say no. Her second instinct was quick to the scene, with some very definite opinions about interacting with Callum, even at as weird an hour as this. She hesitated, wavering.

In the end, it was a glance at the Moon through the window that decided her. Rayla was emphatically not a mystical person, but even so, there were things that were deeply culturally ingrained. And one of those things was Full Moon is community time. Family, or friends, or a wider community – it didn’t really matter, but you weren’t supposed to be alone. This…probably counted.

Yeah, okay, she typed in the end, foot tapping under the desk with a frisson of tension. But only for a bit.

He didn’t waste any time about it, just sent the call request. Rayla took a quick moment to check she hadn’t made a mess of herself dancing, realised it was something of a moot point when everything attached to her was veiled in shadows, and finally accepted the call.

Callum’s room was startlingly brightly-lit when it appeared in the monitor, and it hurt her eyes a bit. She blinked rapidly, fighting the urge to squint, and glimpsed what looked like a well-appointed loft room with an unexpectedly dense population of easels. She could see at least three of them, most of which occupied by some sort of paper or canvas. She blinked, nonplussed, then steadfastly did not react when his face came into view. It moved around jarringly as he adjusted the lightcatcher, then finally settled.

He grinned at the screen, looking sleepy but in good enough humour, and said “Hey! Wow your room is dark.”

Rayla opened her mouth, closed it, then blinked. “Oh, right, your eyes,” she said, embarrassed. She generally only ever called her family, whose night vision was perfectly equal to hers. Humans, as well as most other elf races, were not nearly as well-suited for the dark. “Can you even see anything?”

“I can see your eyes,” he volunteered helpfully, looking amused. “They’re glowing. Really brightly, actually.”

“Yeah, that’s the Full Moon,” Rayla told him, already standing to go for the switch of the wall lamp over her desk. She’d never actually had cause to use it before, other than testing it when she first moved in, so the soft blue light it produced was almost wholly unfamiliar. “Is that better?” She asked, moving back to her chair.

“Well, I can actually see your room now, so-“ he started, then cut off abruptly as she settled back down in front of the lightcatcher. “Oh, wow,” he said instead as he stared at her, eyes wide.

Rayla ignored the self-conscious twinge in her stomach and frowned at him, folding her arms. “What?” she demanded.

He startled, as if only just realising what he’d said. “Oh. Um, sorry?” he attempted, weakly. “It’s just – I’ve never seen a Moonshadow elf all, er…” he waved expressively at her, contrite. “You know, Full Moon-ish?”

Oh. She eyed him, determined that he wasn’t messing with her, and relaxed a little. “What, not even in the Honour Games?” She asked, after a moment.

“Well, I mean, sometimes. But that’s usually in broad daylight, you know, and from a distance, and broadcasted.” He shrugged, a light dusting of pink rising in his cheeks, like he was embarrassed. “Kind of different to…” he nodded to her via the lightcatcher, smiling sheepishly.

“Suppose it is a tad different to a close-up Sunbeam call,” she conceded, lips twitching.

“I should’ve expected it, really, considering it’s full moon and everything,” he said ruefully. “Sorry, I’m not exactly at my brightest at two in the morning.”

Oh, that was right. It was the middle of the night. She squinted at him. “Then shouldn’t you be sleeping, instead of sunbeaming random Moonshadow elves?”

“Well, you’re up,” he said, as if this was a perfectly logical reason for him to be awake too. “And it’s not like I have to be up early.”

Lucky for him. She thought of the training and the Antiquitora rematch she had scheduled for the day, and suppressed a sigh. It was sometimes truly inconvenient to live in a mixed-race city that didn’t automatically expect the day after Full Moon (and the day of and before New Moon, of course) to be a rest day. “Wish I could say the same.”

He winced sympathetically. “Can you not cancel whatever it is?”

She opened her mouth to say no, stopped, and frowned. She hadn’t yet missed training even once. But…it wasn’t like attending every session was compulsory. And she did train three other times a week…and besides, a Sunday morning short session had never fallen on Full Moon recovery day before. “Probably, honestly,” she admitted. “My – uncle wouldn’t even tell me off for it. Moonshadow elves aren’t supposed to work the day after a Full Moon.”

“Because none of you can get to sleep the whole night?” He asked with interest, as if the cultural habits of her kind were genuinely intriguing to him. “Makes sense, I guess.”

Rayla huffed and shook her head. “Kinda. Mostly it’s because, traditionally, we’re supposed to spend moonrise to moonset with – family, or the community, or whatever. And we’re not much good for anything except collapsing once the Moon’s gone. So we all take the next day off.”

He blinked at her curiously, but if he wondered why she wasn’t currently out spending the Moon with her rightful community, he was tactful enough not to ask. “You should skip your thing, then. Whatever it is,” he determined, after a moment. “Get some actual sleep.”

“Says you,” Rayla said, wry. “You don’t even have a stupid magical reason to be up this late.”

“Does a technomantic game count as a stupid magical reason?” He grinned at her, his smile lopsided and full of humour. Her stomach did a weird flip-flop. “I mean. It is magical.”

Despite herself, she snorted. “And it is stupid,” she allowed, lips twitching. “As far as reasons to be sleep-deprived go, anyway.”

“Worth it,” he claimed, cheerfully. “I don’t have work till the afternoon anyway, so I’m fine.”

Rayla nodded at that, then a moment later actually recalled what his job was, and practically felt her face heating. Thank the Moon – literally – for her skin currently being too dark to show it.

He noticed some sort of reaction, though. Maybe her shoulders had hunched a bit. He tilted his head at her, a little rueful, and said “Yeah, er, about that. I wanted to apologise, for the others talking about it, yesterday? Couldn’t have been super comfortable.”

Abruptly hyper-aware of the weight and presence of her horns, Rayla did her best not to sink into the chair. “…It’s fine,” she muttered, embarrassed. “It’s not like you told them about it, they just guessed.”

“Yeah, I definitely wouldn’t tell them about who my customers were unless my customers said something about it first,” he assured her. “Not really professional, you know? We’re supposed to be confidential about it.” Suddenly, he smiled again. “Then again, it’s not like I usually end up meeting my customers at game night, so that part tends to be easier to manage.”

“Usually?” she asked dryly, ruthlessly suppressing the urge to lift her hands and hide her face behind them.

“No, yeah, you’re definitely the first time that’s happened,” he admitted. “It was kind of a surprise.”

She thought about how she’d reacted to seeing him appear through that door yesterday. “Just a tad.”

“A good one, though!” he claimed, cheerful. “It was nice to meet you properly.”

Rayla was tempted to say something along the lines of you know, where I come from, touching up someone’s horns is considerably more than a ‘proper’ meeting, but that was too mortifying to express, and he probably knew it anyway. She couldn’t imagine anyone becoming an experienced ceracurist without learning all the assorted implications that sort of thing had. “Even though I kicked your Archdragon across the board?” She questioned eventually, when she found her voice again.

“Even though you totally kicked my butt, yeah,” he agreed readily, looking far too pleased about it. “It was a great match. You’re crazy good at that game.”

An involuntary smile pulled at her lips. “Well, Kazi’s better,” she said, pleased despite herself. “They’d have had me easily, if they weren’t playing Ocean.”

He didn’t argue with her. Clearly, he understood the game plenty well enough to know the truth of that. “Still the second-best player I’ve met,” he insisted staunchly. “Is Antiquitora one of the computer games you said you did play? You must’ve put in some serious practice time.”

Rayla snorted. “I wish. No, the only games I ever actually got to play were on a gameship, just the one time, when I was…” she frowned, trying to remember. “Thirteen, maybe? Good long while ago.”

He perked up, expression brightening. “I love gameships,” he enthused. “There’s one that comes by Gullcrest twice a year, and I swear, all the students in the entire engineering department just disappear on board until it leaves. It’s crazy.” After a moment, he admitted “Well, to be fair, I disappear on board too, so, you know. It’s not like I can judge.”

She blinked, and leaned forwards. “What clan is the ship?” She asked, with considerable interest.

“It’s a joint management. Serat-Demani,” he said, watching her knowingly.

“Moon above,” she swore, and he grinned.

“Right?” Looking exceedingly pleased with her reaction, he took that as his cue to go into extensive, exacting detail about the wonders that a fully-stocked, state-of-the-art Demani entertainment airship had to offer. She listened raptly the entire time, interjecting with questions about the rates, the facilities, the games. If it was a Demani ship, it had to have Skycrawler, surely? What was it like? Was the gameplay everything it was said to be?

In the end, Rayla didn’t think she could really be blamed for losing track of time.

Callum was in the middle of enthusiastically praising Scion of Shadow, with particular attention to its unusually enjoyable stealth mechanics, when out of nowhere a yawn cracked through his sentence. He seemed fully ready to keep on talking once it was done, but Rayla sat up a little straighter, and for the first time in a while remembered that it was the middle of the night. She consulted her Moon-sense, and then the clock, and then buried her face in her hands.

He cut off mid-sentence, inquisitive. “What?”

“Callum, it’s nearly four in the morning,” she informed him, lowering her hands to stare at the clock, consumed with a baleful sense of having been betrayed by the passage of time. “The sun’s probably not even far off rising.”

He blinked, looked to the side, then blinked again. “…Huh,” he observed, a little sheepish. “Yeah, that’s…later than I usually stay up.”

“It’s later than I usually stay up, even on Full Moons.” Technically true, for the ones she’d spent at university. At home, though…moonset was, after all, later than sunrise in summer. Full Moon celebrations usually concluded once everyone’s skin was back to normal, but not always.

Callum shot her a weird look, long and appraising, before he spoke. “You’re still all…Moon-shadowy, though.”

“That won’t stop for a while yet,” she informed him, and shook her head. “I can probably get to sleep by now, anyway. Or another hour off, at most. You…” For a moment, she inspected him, spotting the signs of tiredness in his bearing. “You won’t have that problem, I think. You look knackered.”

He offered a rueful smile. “I’ll probably pass out the second I lay down, yeah,” he admitted. “I kind of lost track of time. Again.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Well, I’ll just go now, then, so you can’t get distracted again.”

Hastily, he sat bolt upright. “But there was something I wanted to-“

“Tomorrow,” she told him, firmly. “Or…today, technically. Later, anyway. Whatever it is can wait.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, then smiled sleepily at her. It looked far more endearing than it had any right to. “Well, okay then.”

Rayla nodded to him, said “Thanks,” then leaned in and shut the call down without a further word. Sunbeam’s active connection died down, Callum’s face disappearing from the screen, and she leaned back in her chair to fix the ceiling with a long-suffering stare.

On one hand, Ethari would’ve probably been delighted to hear she’d spent a couple hours of her Full Moon socialising, as a proper Moonshadow elf ought to. But on the other….Ethari could absolutely never, ever find out about this. If he knew she’d been up chatting with someone, losing track of time, for actual hours…she’d never hear the end of it. To say nothing of how he’d react if he got wind that she – that she might sort of-

“Ugh,” Rayla grumbled to herself, wiping a hand over her face.

She stared at the ceiling for a good long while, experiencing a variety of emotions that she wasn’t keen on thinking about too hard. She also spent a not inconsiderable amount of time thinking about the conversation, running it over in her head, thoughts stubbornly fixed on Callum. This was how she ended up realising that she’d never actually asked about the mage-student-thing, and she still had no idea how that worked.

“Ugh,” she said again, more emphatically, and finally left her chair. She left her room to perform some necessary ablutions in the bathroom she shared with the next room over, then returned to draw the curtains. Without the direct moonlight through her window, the magic in her skin started to stutter a little. In ten minutes or so, she’d be back to normal again…and, with luck, she might be asleep by then.

Begrudgingly, Rayla peeled herself out of her clothes and threw them haphazardly onto the floor, not even bothering to watch the magic desert them, and climbed into bed. A suboptimal amount of time later, she was asleep.

---

“Goodness, you look tired,” said Kazi, welcoming Rayla in. Rayla, for her part, was a little too exhausted to feel particularly awkward, which was nice. “Was the Full Moon particularly trying?”

Rayla’s lips twitched. At least this one knew when Full Moon was. “No more than usual,” she said dryly, bending to remove her shoes when Kazi made noises about it. “Just, you know, getting enough sleep is kind of a lost cause.”

“Oh, I know the feeling. Or at least somewhat,” they commiserated, leading her through to a small and cosy-looking living room lined with bookshelves, and then through to a somewhat larger dining room, whose table was…occupied. Very thoroughly occupied. Rayla tried not to look at it too closely until she had a chance to inspect it properly. “There was a solar flare a few years ago, and of course I and the other Sunfire elves couldn’t sleep for days. It was quite the experience! And I’m sure you know how the Skywing elves get when there’s a particularly powerful storm abound.”

She had, in fact, had occasion to see what Skywing elves looked like when they were storm-drunk. It had been funny, up until it got annoying. “Probably more of a pain for them and you, really, since none of you take anything like moondust,” she volunteered after a moment, mouth turning up with wry sympathy. She’d hate to be a Skywing and be subject to random, unpredictable bouts of their equivalent of being moonstruck. “You all get the full effect of it.”

Kazi looked a little curious at that, but didn’t ask. “Yes, I suppose so. We should be thankful our magical overload is not so consistent as it is for you. In any case-“ they gestured towards the table. “Please take a seat wherever you prefer! Would you like any stimulants?”

Rayla blinked. “…Could you repeat that?”

“Tea,” they clarified, eyes merry with humour. “Or perhaps reveillant, or coffee, by your preference. I have all three, in some measure.”

For a moment she’d wondered if she was being offered something illegal, which…looking at Kazi, she was quite sure had been on purpose. She shook her head, reluctantly amused, and said “I could try some reveillant? I’ve only had it once.”

“It is not especially common, in a Skywing city like this,” Kazi allowed, already heading in the direction of one of the doorways. They kept speaking as they disappeared through it, still perfectly audible to her ears. “But I always keep a supply. It’s the only one that tastes particularly good cold, after all, unless you are very creative with your teas.” There was the sound of a cupboard opening, and then a good bit of rummaging.

During the wait, Rayla cautiously selected a seat at the table and settled there, finally letting her increasingly wide eyes rove over the board set up across it. She was still gawping conspicuously when Kazi returned, brandishing three brown paper packets of what she assumed to be reveillant.

“Do you prefer unflavoured, citrus, or mixed berry varieties?” they inquired mildly, hiding a smile when they saw her inspecting the board.

“Er, berry?” Rayla offered, only half paying attention. She was too busy looking at the intricate detail on the hand-carved and probably hideously valuable Antiquitora board. There were no pieces on it yet, but even just the tiles…it was astonishing. All of the terrain had been dyed and varnished in different colours, with careful attention to the different biomes. It all gleamed. The ocean tiles had even been coated in some kind of resin, making them look wet. The artisan had even mimicked the effect of the edge of an underwater continental shelf seen from above, with an area of lighter ‘water’ closer to the ‘coastline’.

“Berry it is,” Kazi said, sounding quite smug. Rayla didn’t have the chance to see what their face looked like, because they’d already disappeared back into what she assumed was the kitchen. She spent the next five minutes of beverage preparation time inspecting the game board with undisguised admiration. Rayla wasn’t one to usually pay much attention to art, but…this was game related art. It was different.

“The set you brought to the game night wasn’t your one set, then,” Rayla finally commented, when Kazi reappeared. She accepted her cup with exacting care, not wanting to risk a drink spillage near a board like this. She was honestly surprised Kazi allowed drinks so close to this thing.

Kazi smiled, disproportionately small for the amount of self-satisfaction in it. “Yes, it’s my more portable set,” they said pleasantly, and took a seat across the table from her, setting down their own glass. “This one…well, I certainly do not take it out of the house.”

“I can imagine,” she expressed, uncertain whether to be jealous of the board or just plain impressed. She wouldn’t even want something this pricey. She’d constantly be worrying about damaging it somehow. But, even so…the hint of avarice remained. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“The various tile-pieces and figures are quite a sight themselves, I think,” they said, evidently extremely pleased with themself. Rayla wondered how many people they invited round for Antiquitora for the express purpose of showing off this set. “Have you decided your faction for today? Once we have that settled, we can begin setting up.”

Rayla snorted, lips turning up into a half-smirk. “Depends what you’re playing as.”

Kazi beamed back. “Do you have a preference? I am perfectly open to suggestions.”

She considered it. Allegedly, Kazi was most beastly when playing Earth or Sun. Rayla herself was best at Moon and Sky…and Sky was exceptionally poorly matched against Earth. Sun’s best counters were Earth and Ocean. Moon wasn’t great against Sun, but not terrible either. “Take Sun,” she decided, eventually. “I’ll do Moon. I want to see for myself how much you wipe the board with everyone when you get to play properly.”

If Kazi had been smiling before, they looked positively frightening now. Not that their smile had widened, or anything; they just seemed to have a way of looking disconcertingly menacing while beaming pleasantly at you. “I will do my best to arrange that,” they said, and reached for three boxes: Moon, Sun, and the tiles and dice and cards.

Setting up would have gone more quickly if not for Rayla’s interest in inspecting the various gamepieces, and Kazi’s interest in flaunting them. Most of the units, from citizens to mages, were all carved in beautifully varnished wood. The Hero and Archdragon figures, though… “Is that gemstone inlay?” Rayla asked with disbelief, inspecting her Lunar Archdragon and turning it this way and that.

“The Lunar Archdragon has mother-of-pearl inlay, in fact,” Kazi said pleasantly. “And, yes, some very small gemstones for the eyes.”

She shook her head at that, half-impressed, half in disbelief. “Where did you even get this?”

“It’s an heirloom,” they elaborated, which made sense. The only other way for someone to have a set like this would be by being ridiculously rich, or by knowing an insanely skilled craftself. “Hence why it has the standardised continent shape. It does need fairly careful maintenance, though. I paid to have some of the varnishing redone recently, for example. But for me, the joy of owning a set like this is well-worth the upkeep.”

Rayla nodded. It wasn’t her sort of thing, personally, but she understood well enough. “I bet you try to get people over to play you every chance you get,” she said, amused. “With a board like this…”

“It would be quite a shame otherwise, yes,” they agreed. “I must thank you for obliging me! This board so rarely sees a high-level game.”

She huffed, amused, and kept unpacking the gamepieces one-by-one. Kazi had to know that they were the better player. If she’d barely beaten them when they were playing Ocean and underestimating her for most of the game, she certainly wasn’t going to win now. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Eventually, when everything was set up, they rolled the starting conditions and began playing. Kazi very obviously knew what they were doing with the primary advantages of the Sun faction – agriculture, population, and military might – but Rayla was perfectly well acquainted with a proper Moon playstyle as well. She leaned into the espionage and intrigue skillset as heavily as she could manage, wreaking political strife in Kazi’s territory wherever she found an opening. When Kazi could find them, her units died; but that certainly wasn’t always.

Even so, the outcome was something of a foregone conclusion. The game lasted a while, because Rayla knew that her main defence against the Sun armies was if they couldn’t find the Moon cities, and planned accordingly…but Rayla hadn’t succeeded in assassinating the Archdragon, and hadn’t managed to get the Sun citizenry to demand a leadership duel either. So, unsurprisingly, Kazi eventually managed to field an assault that broke through the illusory barriers protecting Rayla’s stronghold, striking at her Archdragon precisely on the turn before New Moon. It died of its injuries the turn later.

Rayla considered the board carefully after that. Her best chances of winning against Sun would be crop poisoning, Archdragon assassinating, leadership disputes, or revolution. She’d managed the first and had been making decent headway on the latter two, but, in the end…it wasn’t close enough. She smiled ruefully, and said “Moon concedes.”

They nodded, having expected that, and smiled beatifically. “It was a marvellous game,” they said warmly, already reaching over to begin clearing the pieces. “Thank you very much for it.”

“I don’t know, it was a pretty solid victory for you.” Her voice was dry as she reached out to help, handling each of the intricately-carved figures with care. “You’re obviously the better player, here.”

“Yes,” they agreed, neither modestly nor boastfully, simply as the fact it was. “But nonetheless, you are certainly the best player I’ve encountered in-person in a very long time. Certainly the only one I didn’t arrange to meet with beforehand. It was a good game, no matter that you lost it.”

Rayla dipped her head, smiling a little. It wasn’t like she enjoyed losing…but she’d appreciated the challenge enough to make up for it. She’d ceased finding any sort of challenge back home a long, long time ago. “Yeah, it wasn’t bad.”

Kazi reached for another piece, paused, then eyed her consideringly. “Would you…like to discuss it?” they asked, tilting their head, watching her.

She glanced up, surprised. It was hardly an unfamiliar concept. She’d watched enough matches broadcast on Sunbeam to know how it went; when two top-tier players concluded a match, they talked about it afterwards. They discussed each other’s plays and strategies, pointed out mistakes, considered where there was room for improvement…

The only after-game discussions she’d ever had had been at Runaan’s knee, when she was still small and didn’t know the game nearly as well. It was weirdly flattering to be invited to do it now.

“…Yeah,” Rayla said, eventually, and sat back down. “I’d like that.”

Kazi beamed like the Sun they’d just used to trounce her. “Very good.”

The next half hour involved more talking than Rayla thought she’d done at a time in months…or, well, she would’ve said so, if not for last night. It was certainly a good second-place contender though, and by the end her voice was feeling a little tired from overuse. They concluded the discussion, packed away the gamepieces and board, and then were done.

“But of course, you must stay for another drink,” Kazi said, and whisked her empty glass of reveillant away. “You liked the berry infusion, yes? Excellent, I will get you another.” Good to their word, they did precisely that, and returned in short order.

Rayla did feel a little more awake, on that second glass of the reveillant. It was effective stuff; as much or more so than coffee, with (in her opinion) a considerably better taste. She was debating the merits of asking Kazi where they got it when they spoke up first.

“You’ll be returning, I hope?” they said, and it took Rayla a moment to think of what they meant.

“….Here?” she guessed. “For a rematch?”

“Well, yes, naturally.” Kazi pushed their glasses up, smiling a little. “I had assumed as much. But, no, I was referring to the game society. You’d be an excellent fit, I think.”

Rayla blinked. “Oh.” She thought of the previous night, and hunched down a little in embarrassment.

“I know it was only a very small group when you visited, but I have the impression you prefer that, anyway,” they said, neatly demonstrating that they were as unnervingly good at reading her as she’d sort of inferred. “It can get rowdier in term time – at least at the official meetings. The meet-ups at our houses are much calmer – usually just the core group.”

“Which is?” Rayla asked, a little reserved now, if only to disguise the fact that she really didn’t need convincing. She might have, after just the Friday. But after this…after yesterday…

“Myself, Callum, Nihatasi. Usually Pava, but often he spends the whole time tinkering instead of playing.” They shook their head, amused. “In term time – well, usually I’d say to expect Evairas, but he is spectacularly busy these days, so perhaps not.”

“…They sent messages,” she commented, after a moment. “Callum and Nihatasi, I mean. Pava didn’t.”

“Pava tends to forget Sunbeam exists for weeks at a time, don’t mind him,” Kazi assured her. “Nihatasi and Callum though, I’m not at all surprised. Nihatasi adores new people, and Callum…” they eyed her, just a little speculatively. “Well, I think you impressed him. Has he invited you to Tuesday, yet?”

Rayla blinked with consternation. “Invited me to what on Tuesday?”

“Game meeting, at the house,” they clarified. “It’s hardly an official thing, but it’s often Callum’s house that has everyone over. He hasn’t invited you over, yet? Well, he will. I am quite sure of it.”

For a long moment, she looked into her glass and the dark red liquid therein, pondering it as if it held all the answers for how she was supposed to respond. “If you say so,” she said, finally, and lifted her glass to drink.

“I do,” Kazi claimed serenely, and gracefully changed the topic to (naturally) more about Antiquitora. By the time Rayla finished her drink, she’d learned that Kazi played broadcast games online fairly regularly, under a handle that she recognised; she’d watched a good few of their games before.

“Is there a story behind that skein-name?” she asked, undeniably curious now that she was acquainted with the elf behind it. “’Finguistician’.”

Kazi laughed, like she’d surprised them. “Oh, that,” they said, mirthfully. “It’s something of an in-joke. You see, I have my doctorate in Linguistics – specifically, in non-verbal linguistics. Various sign languages, Draconic Corpus, and so on. I made a joke once, when I was still an undergraduate in a sign-language module, that the course should be called finguistics, given, well,” they waggled their fingers at her.

She snorted, amused. “Did it catch on?”

“Sadly, no. But I do call my sign language classes for the public ‘finguistics’, and no one can stop me, because I am the teacher.” They giggled a little to themself. “Perhaps in time it will become a more widely-used term. I would like that; it would be very amusing. In any case, that is where the handle comes from.”

Rayla thought, for a moment, about a moment from the game night: Kazi and Callum had used some sort of sign language with each other for a second, hadn’t they? She considered asking about it, wondering what his background in that was. Did he take any of Kazi’s lessons, or had he learned some other way?

In the end, she bit her tongue and said nothing. After a little more idle conversation, she eventually made her leave, farewelled at the door by her cheerful host. Without the game to bolster her, she swiftly began to really feel her exhaustion. Stimulants or not, she was so tired that a headache was starting to pound luridly behind her eyes, almost enough to make them water.

She headed home intending to collapse back into bed and nap – if the lingering effects of the drinks allowed her to, anyway. Which was why she was considerably displeased to arrive back to find her wing busy and full of noise and various elves milling about. The halls were crowded. She was about to say “What the fuck”, or perhaps “Shut up, do you know how bad my headache is right now”, but before she had the chance one of the closest elves (some wingmate she didn’t know the name of) spotted her and shouted down the hall “It’s her, she’s here, she’s not dead!”

All eyes went to her, and an immediate chattering started up. Rayla stared, utterly nonplussed, fighting the urge to pull on the Moon and take advantage of a state of near-invisibility to just retreat to her nice, privacy-sealed bedroom. The noise cancellation ought to take care of this racket.

After a few seconds, a face she actually had a name for pushed forwards. It was Stavian, a Skywing elf from her bellatorium, still in armour from training. “Rayla,” he said, sounding very relieved. “Thank goodness, we were about to call for an official search!”

Rayla had no idea what was happening. “What in Xadia’s name is going on here?” she demanded, finally, and her irate tone seemed to remind him that he (for some reason) customarily seemed to be quite intimidated by her. He shrank back a little, and as he did, a few of the rest of the Honour Games team started to appear.

“You didn’t show up for training!” he said, defensively. “And from anyone else that wouldn’t be much of a big deal, but you’ve never missed a day before. And then when we went to check on you afterwards you weren’t here.”

“And none of your wingmates knew where you were,” added one of her teammates: Fiera, a particularly tiny Skywing mage with hair and feathers dyed a distinctive lilac colour.

Rayla stared for a few more seconds, then wiped a hand over her face. “It was Full Moon,” she said, very slowly, her patience already somewhere on level with the floor. “I didn’t get to sleep till around five; of course I wasn’t going to go to morning training.” She ignored the fact that, if not for Callum, she absolutely would have. He’d been right; it was completely reasonable to miss training on a Full Moon rest day, and if they had a problem with that they could bite her.

The vast collective of people assembled in the halls all looked very embarrassed, suddenly. And honestly, they should be. Moonshadow elves were definitely uncommon in Gullcrest, but surely someone should have known it was Full Moon, and made the obvious conclusions. “Oh,” said Fiera, weakly. Her wings drooped a little. “That…makes sense.”

Now looking very abashed, Stavian echoed “Oh.” The crowd of assorted wingmates and guests, probably attracted by the initial hubbub, started to grumble and dissipate.

Rayla sighed, and rubbed at her eyes, attempting to scrounge some sort of positive emotion from beneath her absolute crankiness at being confronted with a noisy group of people when she was this sleep-deprived. “Look,” she attempted, tiredly, “It’s…nice you were worried. I didn’t realise anyone would be looking for me.” She searched for something appropriate to say. “I’ll…put a note on my door, if something like this comes up again?”

Her teammates, four of whom had shown up, nodded contritely. “Sorry for bothering you on a rest day,” offered another of them, starting to shove the others towards the door. “We’ll see you for training tomorrow, right?”

“Yes, I’ll be there,” Rayla looked longingly down the hallway, where her bed awaited. “I don’t exactly make a habit of missing training, you know.”

“Yeah, you’re very – dedicated,” Fiera said, in the tones of someone trying to be diplomatic, still being ushered doorwards. “Have a good rest day!” she called, right before the rest of them filed out and the wing became something approaching quiet again.

Too tired and too grumpy to have much emotional response to the whole thing, Rayla turned and headed down her hallway without a further word. The wing was still bustling, and it was more of a relief than usual to close her door on it; the privacy runes hummed lethargically as they activated, but the noise level outside cut off sharply enough that for once she didn’t mind their quality too much. They mostly did their job, and that was all she really needed.

It turned out that the effect of the reveillant couldn’t really complete with post-Full-Moon sleep deprivation; Rayla crawled into bed and fell asleep more or less instantly.

She woke some hours later, stirring at the sound of some computer module or other humming as it reactivated from idling. It wasn’t loud by any means, but she was quite sensitive to new or changing sounds in her vicinity, so it was enough. She blinked her eyes open, rubbing grit from their edges, and stumbled out of bed with a glance at the clock along the way. Moon-sense said it was late afternoon; the clock was a bit more specific about it, and said 6.33pm. The sky outside was still blue and light, but in that summer-evening way, where the sun had fallen low enough to cast long shadows between the city buildings. It was still bright enough to make her tired to look at.

There were new messages on her Sunbeam.

Rayla dropped into her desk chair and eyed the icon tiredly, uncertain if she was awake or rested enough to deal with any further social contact today. In the end she decided there probably wasn’t any harm in checking them, so…she looked. Kazi had thanked her for the game, and sent her some sort of invitation to make an account on…what looked to be the skeinsite that hosted the high-level Antiquitora broadcasts. She wasn’t sure what the purpose of that was, and didn’t have her head on sufficiently to figure it out, so she left it for later. Ethari had asked how her Full Moon had been. And…

She sighed, not sure whether to be pleased or embarrassed, because: Callum had left messages, too. Fairly recently, actually.

They read Hope you got to sleep okay, and how are you feeling? There was no mention of whatever he’d supposedly wanted to mention before the call ended, so he’d probably forgotten, or…something.

She debated whether or not to reply now. She found she was a little wary of…something. She wasn’t quite sure what. Making a fool of herself, maybe? She’d already spent nearly two very late-night hours sunbeaming him, and…that was already…well.

In the end, Rayla spent about five minutes trying to wrestle some semblance of reason past her sleep-mired brain, finally concluding that she was probably unlikely to come across as an infatuated idiot by responding to a couple of messages. Then, slowly, she picked at the keys to write back: Kind of knackered, but okay. While that one was processing, she hesitantly sent another: Just woke up from a nap. I think it helped?

She left the computer to visit the bathroom, tidying up her hair and washing her face with cold water. It did little to make her feel more alert, or to remove the weird muggy haze of exhaustion from her head, but it was better than nothing. She contemplated getting something to eat, but knew she wasn’t going to be up to cooking tonight. She went for one of her bottles of emergency moonberry elixir instead, which were so full of nutrients they probably counted as some kind of soup.

That in hand, she returned to her computer….and, somehow, wasn’t surprised to find that Callum had already replied. Was he just constantly glued to his computer, or what?

Well, at least it’s apparently traditional to be tired after full moon, I guess? He’d written, light-heartedly. At least you got a nap! Although it’s kind of late. Won’t you have trouble getting to sleep later?

Rayla shuffled forwards in her chair to respond. Nah. There’s a neat trick you can use to get to sleep at night if you’re a Moonshadow elf, and if it’s not Full Moon. Just need to shine a bright light in my face and I’ll be good. She hadn’t had to use it in a while, but she knew where the thing was: on her windowsill, to soak up sunlight during the day. It’d do the job just fine.

The pause in response seemed to be longer than connection lag would account for. That’s so weird, and cool, he marvelled, eventually. I just looked it up. They call them sun lamps?

Yep. Flash of sunlight in a dark place gets us sleepy pretty much every time. Moonshadow elves tended to be mostly diurnal by practice, but naturally, they all had the wiring for a nocturnal lifestyle. Bright sunlight in the eyes after being in the dark would usually trigger tiredness, even in elves perfectly used to going about in the daytime. Sun lamps were extraordinarily simple as far as enchanted objects went, but extraordinarily useful for Moonshadow elves with weird schedules.

What about if someone turns a light on in a dark room? He asked, apparently fascinated.

Nah. Has to be sunlight. It’s pretty specific.

That’s so cool, he reiterated, from that bizarre well of enthusiasm he seemed to have for banal magical elements of everyday life. Rayla waited to see if he’d write anything more, and after a moment, realised she’d started smiling. She wasn’t sure when that had happened. Eventually, he did send something else: I’d ask if you wanted to call again, but you should probably, you know, be getting actual sleep.

What Rayla intended to write then was something along the lines of, ‘yes, you’re entirely correct, I need to sleep for like twelve hours if I’m not going to be a useless wreck for training tomorrow’.

Instead, what she ending up sending was keep it half an hour or less, and you’re probably fine.

I’ll set a timer :) he typed, complete with smiley, which was something she’d never actually encountered outside of the mageskein before. And then he called her.

“How’s the light level?” she asked him, when the call resolved. It wasn’t yet far into sunset, so she thought there ought to be sufficient lighting in her room to see by, but who really knew with humans. She certainly didn’t know how bad their eyes were.

In his own room, Callum was bathed in the warm glow of the light through his windows, shaded the same pink-orange that she was. He was smiling, even as he pretended to squint exaggeratedly at her room. “Yeah, I can just about see,” he said, obviously teasing. “It’s not dark yet.” A pause, and he took a moment to look her over a little more directly. He was a little more concerned when he added “Are you sure it’s okay to be calling? You really do look tired.”

“I think I’ll survive half an hour, Callum,” she told him wryly, and one corner of his lips twitched upwards.

“Yeah, fair enough.” He hesitated for a moment, like he was summoning his nerve for something. “Listen – I wanted to ask before, yesterday, but – there’s going to be a sort of casual gaming night? At my house? On Tuesday. The others will be there. And my housemates, er, obviously.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry if it’s short notice, but – do you want to come?”

Rayla stared at him, half bemused by the offer itself, half at his apparent nervousness. “Kazi said you were going to invite me,” she said, a little too nonplussed to offer any more intelligent response. “I guess they were right.”

He blinked. “You’ve been talking to Kazi?” A pause. “No, wait, what am I saying, of course you’ve been talking to Kazi. There’s no way they’d let someone who beat them at Antiquitora get away.”

“We had a rematch today, actually,” Rayla admitted, lips twitching. “I let them take Sun. Naturally they destroyed me.”

“Ow,” Callum said, with feeling. “I’ve been on the receiving end of Kazi playing Sun before. It’s…” he searched for the words. “Really something.”

She smiled, remembering it. With a few hours separating her from the game, she realised she’d enjoyed the experience more than she’d anticipated. The discussion in particular had been welcome. “I’m just glad to be able to play someone new, honestly,” she confided. “Though it’d be nice to do it again when I’ve actually slept.” A second later, she remembered he’d had an almost equally dubious bedtime, and inspected him critically. He looked surprisingly okay, actually. A little tired, but not like he’d been up most of the night. “Did you sleep in late, or what?” She asked then, a little amused. “You don’t actually look tired.”

He laughed sheepishly. “Yeah, I didn’t wake up till around lunchtime,” he admitted. “I had to go to work after that, though.”

Rayla paused, still very unsure of how to respond to mentions of his work. “And…was that okay?” She asked at last, uncertainly.

“Yeah, actually. I had a pattern etching appointment, and those are some of my favourites,” he said, brightening. “This one wanted one of my new designs, too. It turned out great!”

She’d seen something about that on the posters in the waiting room, she thought. “That’d be the…buzzing patterns into the horns?” She asked, faintly.

“Mmhm. I use sort of a really small thin version of an electric buffer, and work the etching in that way,” he agreed. “I draw the design on first and follow the lines, and then after you can either just polish it up and leave it, or like, fill with metal or something. It takes a while, but, you know, that’s kind of just how art works.” He shrugged. “It looks great, anyway.”

Rayla thought of her looming appointment, maybe a week or so away, and found she was entirely unprepared for thinking about that. “You…seem to kind of do the art thing a lot?” she hazarded, as a distraction, nodding to the nearest easel. “Painting?”

He turned to look, then grinned back at her. “Yeah! I mean, art is…well, I probably draw more than I game, and that’s really saying something. I do all sorts, kinda. I’ll have to show you some of my sketchbooks sometime.” That seemed to remind him of the question she still hadn’t answered, and he abruptly looked nervous again. “So. Er. Um. About Tuesday…?”

She tried, very hard, to keep an even expression. “Er,” she managed, and then finally: “…Yeah. Sounds good? I’ll…be there.” Wherever ‘there’ was. She did have the address written down, but hadn’t actually tried to figure out where it was in the city yet.

Callum straightened up, brightening. “Really? That’s great!” A second later, he amended “It’ll be really nice to have someone new over! We’ll have food and stuff, too.”

She paused at that. “Should I bring anything?” Hospitality expectations tended to be very different depending on culture, so it merited the question.

“Nah. Well, if you want, you can bring snacks or food, but you don’t need to. We have loads.” A second later, he added ruefully “Kassa has some…pretty strong opinions about how fully-stocked a kitchen should be.”

“That’s one of your housemates?” she remembered.

“Yeah! Actually, I lived with Kassa and her mom for a few years before. They sort of hosted me, when I was…well, when I first came to Gullcrest.” He amended his sentence half-way through, as if realising he was about to say too much. She was intensely curious about that. “This house is her family property, too, so we don’t have to pay much on it. We moved in when Kassa started her undergrad.”

She blinked, filing that information away. This had something to do with the mystery of him doing a mage’s masters at the age of eighteen, she was sure of it, but… “What about your other housemates?”

“Nihatasi moved in because we had room and she was a friend,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Soren…” he hesitated. “Well, he’s a childhood friend of mine,” he settled on eventually. “So he came to study here, and he took the last spare room.”

Rayla eyed him, but didn’t question him on the obvious secrets clamouring behind his words. “Looks a lot roomier than usual student wings, at least,” she commented finally. “These rooms are pretty cramped. And the runework is pretty worn-down. My door makes this horrible droning noise every time the wards come on.”

He made an ‘oof’ sound. “I’ve visited student wings before. They’re…well, they’re okay. Definitely prefer this house though.” He eyed her curiously. “Is yours at least one of the ones where you get one bathroom between two people? Because I knew someone who only had one bathroom for twelve, and it was terrible.”

“That sounds disgusting,” she said, making a face. She could hardly imagine how terrible that would be, with how some of her wingmates were. “I’m so glad that’s not me.”

“So glad,” he agreed, and before she knew it, they were off on a weirdly engrossing conversation about the merits of student living compared to home life. He was pretty evasive about it, but she got the impression he’d been used to a fairly fancy home before he came to Gullcrest, and he’d been astonished at what student wings were like.

Rayla was in the middle of describing how chaotic move-in day had been, with so many elves hauling all their boxes of things in at once, when a shrill ringing started up from over Callum’s voicecatcher. He reached hastily to the side and disabled some sort of egg timer that had gone off, settling back into view with a sheepish smile.

“That was the timer,” he said, apologetically.

Half an hour, already. It was a little disconcerting how quickly it’d gone by. “I’d better try to turn in for an early night, then,” she offered, weirdly reluctant to hang up.

He hesitated a fair bit, too. “Probably a good idea,” he agreed, wry. “We can talk again later?” His tone went questioning, at that. A little hopeful.

Rayla resisted the urge to bury her face in her hands. “…Yeah, sure,” she sighed, more and more exasperated with herself for just how much she wanted to talk to him.

Callum smiled again, the edges of him lit up from the light of the falling sun. “Later, then,” he said, and hesitated once again. Then he reached out, and the call disconnected. Sunbeam minimised to its idling overlay around the edges of her screen, the background of Silvergrove scenery back to the fore.

She sighed, and leaned back in her chair. Ruefully, she spend a while reflecting on exactly how in trouble she was. Then she did as a responsible elf on their Full Moon rest day ought, and went to attempt an early night.

She managed it almost as soon as it was dark enough for her magic rune-rock to work. Thank Xadia for sun lamps, honestly.

---

End chapter.

Yeah so this is basically completely unbetaed, even by me, because I’ve been frantically trying to churn out a complete chapter this week in time for the Modern AU day of rayllum month. There will be typos, there will be clunky sentences, that’s just what you get for a rush job. I’ll return to it and do some editing in the morning.

Re: the Antiquitora. ‘Would you like to discuss the game’ *hikago fandom origins vibes intensify*

Worldbuilding notes for this chapter:

Moondances: specific ritual dances made to react with the runic Circles that Moonshadow elves use. The dancing is used as a form of spellcraft, to cast enchantments or strengthen the magic of a community. The Full Moon dances in Silvergrove for example are integral for keeping its magical defences running. (piaj)

EX and WX: East Xadian and West Xadia. A more modern and correct term for the human and elf/dragon sides of the continent, respectively.

Artefact magic: primal magic cast with a power source other than your own arcanum. E.g. a primal stone, a moon opal.

Thaumaturgy: the practice of magic casting.

Thaumatology: the study of magic.

Lightcatcher: magic camera, basically.

Voicecatcher: magic microphone, basically.

Honour Games: a fun sport :) more on this later.

Technomancy/technomantic: alternate proper term for magical engineering.

Antiquitora notes: while the game has been steadily gaining complexity over time, the game at its fundamentals is very old, and quite traditional. It’s considered a respectable strategy game, and Runaan certainly would have approved of Rayla showing an interest in it when she was younger. Modern variants tend to adopt features and ‘house rules’ that don’t strictly conform to traditional standards, though.

East Xadian computer games: though boasting dramatically better visuals and audio than human technology is currently capable of, the limitations of elven computing mean that computer games are extremely expensive, and difficult to integrate into lesser systems. Most elves will never be able to run the best gaming modules at home.

Nomad Gameships: Brevili nomads are well known for their magical engineering, and produce some of the most advanced technomantic games there are. Owing to the limited number of elves who can actually afford to buy them, they get creative with the marketing: many clans field airships whose sole purpose is travelling around as a sort of mobile arcade, landing at various destinations for a set amount of time, during which customers can pay for access to the many assorted games they have on offer. Demani, as the clan that (a good long while ago) invented the airship in the first place, boasts the most impressive facilities on their ships.

Skycrawler: a game so advanced and finicky that its developers haven’t yet figured out how to get it to run on less advanced systems than the gameships’ computers. There are a handful like these, usually the newest and most technomantically complex titles, and their release on gameships usually serves as something of a ‘beta’ build while they refine the technology for more accessible use. Imunaviga was one of these, and was very recently released for public purchase.

Imunaviga: as several commenters guessed, this is indeed a Subnautica expy. Rayla is not at all keen on the idea of playing it. I spent probably too much time working out the worldbuilding and plot for the elf AU version of this game. It was a lot of fun though.

Scion of Shadow: a well-regarded game with a Moonshadow elf protagonist, involving a lot of stealth gameplay, a highly-lauded storyline, and in-setting ‘fantasy’ elements; i.e. they’d be considered fantasy in this fantasy setting.

Magical overload states: Natural events that cause high levels of ambient primal magic can induce some very unusual effects in beings with the relevant arcana. Terms include ‘moonstruck’ for Moonshadow elves, ‘sunstruck’ for Sunfire, and ‘storm-drunk’ for Skywing. (piaj)

Moondust: a magic-dampening drug taken in different dosages based on the phase of the moon, to dampen the effect of the lunar cycle on Moonshadow elves’ bodies and minds. Not all Moonshadow elves take it, but most do. (piaj)

Reveillant: Sunfire elf beverage made from the dried berries of a shrub with stimulant properties. Some preparations are very strong and are restricted, but preparations from the berries are mild and very popular. (piaj)

Draconic Corpus: a sort of full-body sign language spoken by dragons incapable of complex vocal speech. Given this accounts for the majority of dragons, it’s generally useful to understand some of, even if bipeds are generally incapable of speaking it properly. (piaj)

#rayllum #rayllummonth #tdp callum #tdp rayla #college AU #modern AU #the ceracurist

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