A murmur rolled the rim
[Borrowed set - Balance+30, Thermal Tolerance+15 (10 minutes).]
Strength flowed into my calves and feet,the world tilting into a solvable equation. Alma's fingers threaded my spine, my center of gravity found me like an old friend.
"Mount" she whispered.
I stepped up into the heat.
The dragon rose under me like a landscape. The world titled, I slotted my knees behind a ridge of scale,hands light,my back flexible. The gauntlet's claws found microseams like climbing holds. The dragon's breath ballooned my tunic. The next exhale tried to rip off.
"Easy," I told everything.
"Cheating!" Lucien shouted. "Foreign magic! He used a charm!"
"Jealousy is not a legal claim," Alma chimed
The dragon bunched,the rookery fell away.
We launched. White Fire ripped the air, the ward flared. Nobles cried out, my stomach stayed on the ground while the rest of me learned to pray. The dragon rocketed along the cliff face, swung out over the city, and the dawn finally tore the bruise of sky and bled gold everywhere.
Wind punched my eyes,tears streamed back. I pressed low,moving with the flex and roll the way Alma fed it into me.. hips loose, shoulder soft,not fighting the monster but learning it's song and way.
"Left," she breathed, a ghost in my ear. "It'll test with a bank. Give before you take. Think surfing, think…mmm, grinding…"
"Please," I hissed, "do not use that word right now."
We cut left, then dove…my organs took the stairs, my heart the elevator. The city rings blurred, chrome and sigil towers, banners snapping in the wind, the glint of the east gate where I'd kissed Rhea and humiliated myself into a combat skill.
The dragon roared. The sound went through me and out the other side new.
"Okay," I whispered to the creature that could erase me. "Okay, I get it! You're incredible!"
It twisted in reply, a roll that wanted to see if I'd panic. But I didn't,I wanted to though, nearly did but I didn't. Alma's borrowed balance sang in my bones, the wrist wrap burned cold, the gauntlet clicked,claws finding fresh purchase.
We climbed into the throat of the wind and burst over the rim again, into the bowl, into the wall of voices. The dragon flared backwinged, and came down hard enough to make the basalt jump.
I was still there. Silence held for a heartbeat. Then the rookery erupted…shouts, disbelief,the kind of cheer you hear when people realize they're going to talk about this breakfast for years.
Lucien looked like he'd bitten a lemon made of knives. The Emperor's expression didn't change, except that it did,in the micro-muscle way of men who have lost a silver of control. Charlotte….smiled. it wasn't good.
The magus lifted his staff. "By witness and ward,the sovereign has borne the irregular candidate. The challenge is…"
"I decline." I said
You could feel the sound die.
"I'm not here," I said, voice shaking but louder than the morning, "for marriage, or a night, or a collar. I accept the result but I refuse the prize."
Lucien actually choke. The nobles' whispers became a snake pit. Rhea didn't move but something in her shoulders unknotted.
Charlotte walked into the circle…The dragon didn't bother to look at her
"You refuse me?" She asked softly.
I swallowed. "Yes.. Yes I do."
"You tame my sovereign," she said, not looking at the dragon, "but you won't share my bed?"
"I'm not a prize," I said and heard the boy I'd been in my own world say for once.
She smiled the way a blade glints. "Then I will take something you do want."
She lifted one hand. The wards above is shifted pitch..high, painful, thin. A lattice of glyphs snapped into being around me, a delicate cage of light that hummed in a key that hurt.
Alma's laughter cut off. "..Eiji?"
Panels stuttered into my vision, then jittered,then broke. Half letters,glitch snow.
[-tem F-]
[Pr– –K]
[Ne— —k]
Her voice doubled, trebled, tasting of metal. "That's..that's a suppression splitter….don't…don't move.."
The hurt-to-hear not bored into my teeth. I dropped to one knee without deciding to. The gauntlet flickered.. my right hand was suddenly only a hand in a glove.
Rhea move but two guards stepped to block her. She didn't slow.. Lucien's sword sang out of its sheath.
Charlotte watched me fall like she was savouring a vintage. "You should have said yes, pet."
"Your Majesty," the magus said sharply to the Emperor, "this violates…"
"Silence," Charlotte said, and the sigils brightened. Alma's outline fuzzed like a low-res stream., her eyes went wide for the first time since I'd known her.
"Master, I…I can't…" A shiver took her and didn't give her back. "Don't…leave..I.."
Panic is a place and I arrive there all at once.
"Stop it!" I shouted, and my voice sounded like it belonged to someone who deserved to be ignored.
Charlotte tilted her head. "Ride or burn little toy? You rode, now you burn."
The dragon moved. Everyone flinched… even Charlotte.
If slid it's head between us with the patient inevitability of a glacier. White Fire coiled along it's teeth,not quite spilling,the way a smile doesn't quite show molars. Its eyes filled my vision. In it I saw myself kneeling, trembling,a gauntlet flickering,a system-girl unraveling.
It exhaled across the Glyph cage. The sigils trembled,went pale and for an instant.. only that.. the hum faltered.
Alma gasped like she'd been underwater and found the surface. "There… there…Eiji.." Her voice was ragged code. "If you can move…left…two steps.."
Rhea hit the ward line at a run. Guards closed in, Lucien smiled.
Charlotte lifted her hand again,the hum rose.
Everything narrow became a point.
"Alma," I said into the knife note. "I trust you."
The gauntlet flared once…weak, stubborn. Borrowed balance and strength prickled my ankles. The wrist wrap froze my bones. Two steps left felt like two miles into a flood.
I moved.. The Glyph cage screamed.. The dragon's breath poured.. then,precise white flameike a surgeon's scalpel… into a single sigil-node. Light shattered into spin glass.
A hole open in the lattice the size of a desperate man. Rhea came Through it.
"Down," she snapped, her shoulder bit me like a blessing.
"we fell together as the rookery erupted..guards shouting,nobles squealing,the Emperor finally rising, Charlotte's "No" cracking like an elegant plate dropped in slow motion.
The dragon's roar rumbled the sky.
Alma's outline steadied one heartbeat then tore again. "Go," she wheezed. "Eiji go.."
Rhea dragged me, fast and low toward the only gap that existed because a thousand year old monster had decided not to be bored. The hum built behind us.. Lucien's blade hissed.
Charlotte's voice,level and lethal, "Kill the Captain, take the boy toy and Rip the system out."