The world, for Mordecai, was a study in silences. The quiet hum of his power. The silent language of Kaiphus. The deep, echoing quiet of the loss he carried. His life was a library of whispered secrets and screamed memories—only he could hear them. He moved through the city's noise like a ghost, insulated by his mission and grief.
Lina was noise.
He met her at the gym. He came for its brutal, honest simplicity. Hit the bag. Lift the weight. No magic, no subtlety. Just the straightforward economy of force. She was there most evenings. A woman in her mid-twenties, arms corded with muscle, with a shock of short, bright pink hair. She wasn't there to get fit; she was there for the rhythm. She'd work the heavy bag with a staccato, percussive beat—jab, cross, hook, reset. Her movements set a perfect, driving tempo. She'd hum as she lifted. A low, off-key melody that somehow synced with the clank of weights.
She was an urban drummer. He learnt this later. She played in subway tunnels and at open mic nights. Her kit was a collection of buckets, cans, and one cracked cymbal. She created complex, joyful chaos from the city's discarded parts. Her life was a symphony of sound. She was its enthusiastic, unapologetic conductor.
She noticed him because of his silence. Where others grunted and exhaled with effort, he was utterly mute. His focus was a physical thing, a void of sound that drew her in. One evening, as he was wrapping his hands, she approached him, smelling of sweat and coffee.
"You're new," she said, not as a question but as a statement. Her voice was louder than necessary, meant to carry over the gym's din.
He glanced up, then back at his hands. A dismissive gesture he'd perfected.
She didn't take the hint. She never did. She saw his reticence not as an insult or a wall, but as a setting on a dial she hadn't figured out how to adjust yet. "You fight like you're counting the beats," she observed. "Precise. I like it. Spar?"
He almost refused. It was a risk. His control was good, but the combination of martial arts and latent sorcery was a volatile mix. But something in her directness, her lack of pretence, disarmed him. He gave a single, curt nod.
They sparred. She was good. Faster than she looked, with a knack for finding rhythm in chaos. He held back, of course, using only his trained skill. He moved with an economy of motion that was almost eerie, each block and counter a perfect, minimal response. After three rounds, they were both breathing heavily. She grinned, sweat beading on her forehead.
"You're weird," she announced, and it sounded like a compliment. "I like weird. Beer?"
And so began their unlikely, clumsy friendship. They would go to a dive bar around the corner after training, a place with sticky floors and neon signs that buzzed like angry insects. They drank cheap, stale beer that tasted like pennies and pretzels from a bowl that probably hadn't been cleaned in a decade.
Lina did most of the talking. She talked about her music, about the arseholes on the subway who threw change without listening, about her dreams of a real drum kit, and about her three-legged cat named Tripod. She was a geyser of unfiltered experience. She laughed too loudly, a sound that cut through the murmur of the bar and made heads turn. It should have grated on him, this onslaught of sound. Instead, it began to feel like a lifeline.
In the clumsy tenderness of those evenings, Mordecai learnt a new kind of magic. It was the magic of mundane exchange. He learnt to let someone in without expecting imminent loss. With Lina, there was no hidden agenda, no tragic past to tiptoe around. She was gloriously, vibrantly present.
He never told her about Cassandra. He never mentioned Ra'Zul, or Aethelas, or the Bone Serpent sleeping in his soul. Those things were too vast, too sharp. To speak them would be to tear a hole in the fragile, normal world they were building over beer and pretzels.
But he did, one evening, tell her about the teacups.
They were talking about collections. She collected vintage concert t-shirts, ones with faded logos and holes in the armpits. "They've got history, you know?" she said, swigging her beer. "What about you? Everybody collects something. Even if it's just regrets."
He hesitated. It was a tiny secret, but it was his. A piece of his inner world. Sharing it felt like a monumental risk. Kaiphus, draped over the back of his chair, gave a slow, encouraging ripple.
"I… collect teacups," he said, the words feeling absurd the moment they left his mouth. "Antique ones. Chipped ones, mostly."
Lina didn't laugh. She leaned forward, her eyes bright with interest. "Yeah? Why?"
He couldn't tell her the real reason. That they were tombstones for a dead world. That each chip was a memory he was trying to hold onto. So he told a simpler truth. "I like the patterns. The history. The… patience it took to make them." It wasn't a lie. It was just a shallower draught from a very deep well.
Lina nodded thoughtfully. "That's cool. Really cool. "Weirder than my shirts, for sure." She grinned. "You'll have to show me sometime."
And that was it. No interrogation. No pity. Just acceptance. He had admitted a piece of his ridiculousness, and the world hadn't ended. The floor hadn't opened up. Lina had just filed it away as another interesting fact about her weird, quiet friend.
It was a revelation. It was easier to admit to a collection of ridiculous china than to the gaping hole of his grief. The former was quirky; the latter was a burden too heavy to hand to someone else. With Lina, he could practise the act of connection without exposing the raw, bloody nerve at his core.
She became his anchor to the present, to a world that wasn't all maps and whispers and lurking terror. She was noisy, and her noise was a shield against the silence within. She was the rhythm of a life that could, perhaps, be lived alongside the hunt, not just consumed by it. She taught him that not all attachments were anchors that could drag you under; some were buoys that kept you afloat.