Chapter 40 Training Phase 1
Brea's POV
Drake pulled back from the hug slowly. Looked at my face. Then at my bandaged hand.
"I know someone," he said.
"Someone who can help with..." I gestured vaguely at myself. The missing senses. The grey world. All of it.
"Someone who works with this kind of thing." He was already moving toward the door. "Human territory sorcerer. He's not flashy but he knows more than most." He glanced back at me. "Can you walk?"
I looked at my legs. "Probably."
I managed half a street before Drake put my arm over his shoulder without commentary and kept moving. I let him. I was too tired to have an opinion about it.
The human territory sorcerer worked out of a basement two streets from the market. No sign outside.
Just a grey door — everything grey now, every door, every wall, every face we passed — with a specific knock Drake did without explaining where he learned it.
The man who answered was small and thin and looked like someone who hadn't slept properly in several years and had made peace with that.
He looked at Drake, then at me, then at my bandaged hand, and stepped back to let us in without asking questions.
The basement was cluttered in the specific way of someone who worked with many things simultaneously and organized by a system nobody else could follow. Jars. Books with broken spines.
A table covered in chalk marks that hadn't been fully wiped between uses.
Drake sat me down. The sorcerer his name was Fen. I told him everything. The circles. The possession. The four missing senses. The nine vessels. All of it.
He listened without interrupting. When I finished he was quiet for a moment.
Then he said "I can't help you with most of that."
I stared at him. "What do you mean you can't—"
"I mean what I said." He wasn't apologetic about it. "The possession witches you're describing...dark circle practitioners, three hundred year old bloodline magic that's not my territory. I work with ambient enchantments. Ward maintenance. Basic compulsion breaking." He gestured at his table.
"This." A pause. "What you're describing is something else entirely."
"Then what do we do," Drake said.
Fen hesitated. "There's someone I can try to summon. He works at a level that would cover this." Another hesitation, longer. .
"He never responds to my calls though. I've tried six times over the years. He has better things to do than answer a district sorcerer."
"Try anyway," I said. Fen set up the summoning with the particular efficiency of someone who expected it to fail. Chalk circle on the cleared section of floor.
Specific components placed at specific points. Then Fen crouched at the edge of the circle, pressed two fingers to the chalk line and spoke.
"Caleth moru — veysan draeth — solum kanis veth." He paused. Then repeated it slower, heavier. "Caleth moru — veysan draeth — solum kanis veth."
He waited. The components sat exactly where he'd placed them. The circle didn't react. The air didn't shift.
Fen sat back on his heels and looked at the circle for a long moment. Then at us. "As I said."
"Let me try," I said. Drake turned to me. "Brea"
"I summoned him before without trying." I was already moving toward the circle. "In my room. He just appeared." I stood at the edge of the chalk. "Let me try."
I didn't know what I was doing. I want to be clear about that. I had no framework for it, no technique, no understanding of what I was reaching for.
I just stood at the edge of the circle and thought about Elias Vorn his expensive suit and his mild irritation and the specific quality of his presence and reached for him the way you reach for a word you can't quite remember.
The air in the center of the circle compressed. Then Elias Vorn was standing in it.
He looked down at the chalk circle around his feet. Then at his own hands. Then slowly around the room.
For the first time since I had known him, Elias Vorn had no immediate response ready.
"That," he said finally, "was not supposed to be possible."
Fen had dropped to one knee on the floor. Head down. Both hands flat on the stone.
The particular posture of someone who has just encountered something so far above their pay grade that the body makes the decision before the mind does.
"Sir," Fen said. To the floor.
Elias looked at him briefly. Then at me. He recovered in approximately four seconds.
"You summoned me," he said.
"Yes," I said.
"Across district boundaries. Without preparation. Without training." He paused. "Using instinct."
"Apparently." He looked at me for a long moment. Then he straightened his jacket the gesture that meant he had finished processing something and was moving on.
"That's the second time something has happened that I didn't intend," I said.
"The possession. Now this." I looked at my own hand. "Something is in me that I don't understand and I don't know how to control it and it keeps doing things without my permission." I looked up at him.
"What is it."
"I need you to train me," I said.
"No," he said immediately.
"Elias—"
"Training someone at your level of uncontrolled power is time consuming, dangerous, and deeply inconvenient." He looked around the basement with mild distaste. "And I have other things to do."
"I have nine possessed vessels in this city and Dreadbones moving in and four missing senses and no idea how to use whatever this is." I held his gaze. "Train me."
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he snapped his fingers.
A scroll materialized between us. Glowing faintly at the edges, hovering at eye level, already unrolled to reveal densely written terms that shimmered slightly as I read them.
Training. Duration unspecified. Complete cooperation with his methods. Active pursuit of all nine possessed vessels. And at the bottom — the number that made my stomach drop.
One million dollars. Payable upon completion.
"You're serious," I said.
"I'm always serious about payment," he said. "I find idealism doesn't cover operational costs."
"Don't sign it," Drake said immediately. He stepped forward, jaw set. "Brea don't sign anything. We don't know what the terms actually mean, we don't know what he considers completion, we don't—"
I reached out and touched the scroll.
"Brea—"
The glow pulsed once under my fingers. Warm — I felt it, actually felt it, the first sensation that had reached me since the witches took everything. Just warmth. Just for a second.
I pressed my hand flat against it.
Drake moved fast. His hands closed around the scroll and he pulled tore it cleanly in half, then in half again, scattering the pieces across Fen's floor.
He turned to Elias. "There. Done."
Elias looked at the pieces on the floor. Then at Drake. A slow smile, the first genuine one I had seen from him moved across his face.
"The binding completed," he said pleasantly, "the moment she touched it."
Drake stared at him.
"The physical document is ceremonial," Elias continued, with the air of someone explaining something obvious to someone who should have known better.
"The contract is between her power and mine. It was finished before you picked it up." He glanced at me. "She's bound. With or without the paper."
Drake turned to me. The look on his face had several things in it — anger, frustration, and underneath both of those something that looked a lot like fear on my behalf.
I looked at my hand. The warmth was gone. But for one second it had been there.
"When do we start," I said to Elias. He straightened his jacket.
"You already have," he said.