- Chapter 028 -

  Thirty-Two

  The book lay closed on the bedside table, its silent promise of a mystery a tangible thing in the quiet room. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, Mark woke not to a feeling of dread, but to the sharp, focused edge of a new objective. He had a direction, and a question if it would be something of a tangible lead.

  The morning routine was a familiar burn, but today he pushed through it with determination. His mind wasn't on the pain in his muscles or the lingering exhaustion, it was on the library, on the unreadable book, on the fundamental law of this world that had, for some reason, failed. He moved through breakfast and the cleanup on autopilot, his thoughts already halfway across town.

  There was some level of relief in having something to action, he had to admit to himself that the direction from the tomb was not good, and it scared him, this was a way beyond that.

  He dressed in the same simple, durable grey tunic and trousers from the day before, the functional attire of a man with a job to do. He pocketed the small pouch of coins and the strange, heavy book about Istos, wrapped in a cloth bag he found in a cupboard. He was ready.

  His hand was on the latch of the front door, the cool bronze a solid weight under his palm, all his focus on going forwards, moving onwards, past his status as an anomaly…

  When a gentle knock echoed from the other side.

  He froze. The sound was soft, polite, nothing like the demanding summons he half-expected. But after his encounter with Alex Smith, any unsolicited visitor felt like a threat. He braced himself, letting the manager's mask of calm neutrality settle over his features. Another guild. Another message. Another test. He took a steadying breath and opened the door.

  His carefully constructed defenses faltered. It wasn't another giant in armor.

  It was Tori.

  She stood on his doorstep, looking deeply uncomfortable. He hadn't seen her since the evening she'd shared his hastily cooked pasta, and her presence here, now, was a complete surprise. She clutched a simple cloth bag in one hand and refused to meet his eyes.

  And she wasn't alone. Standing a respectful pace behind her was a large man, his presence a silent, solid weight. He was tall, with the powerful, sturdy build of a career laborer, his face weathered and framed by a rough-cut beard. He wore simple, functional clothing with no Guild markings, and his calloused hands hung loosely at his sides.

  Mark's mind stumbled. There was a flicker of something familiar about the man, a sense of weary authority that seemed out of place with his simple attire. The eyes seemed to hold a depth of patience that felt ancient. Mark searched his memory, trying to place the face, but the context wouldn't come. A face from a dream or a half-remembered moment shrouded in the fog of his arrival.

  "I..." Tori began, her voice tight. She still wasn't looking at him, her gaze now intensely focused on the hinges of his door as if they held the most fascinating secrets in the world. "Valerie suggested... My conduct, the last time we were here. It was unprofessional." She finally risked a glance at him, her pride warring with a reluctant, painful sincerity. "I let the situation escalate. I ignored what happened, I can’t… won't let that happen again."

  It was a half-apology, Mark could see the genuine effort it cost her. The chip was still there, a hard, defensive edge to her posture, but she was trying. Her companion seemed even less enthusiastic. The large, silent man stood like a statue, his entire posture screaming that he would rather be anywhere else in the known universe than on Mark's doorstep.

  Mark let out a slow, tired breath. He had a mission for the day, and this was an unscheduled, and likely unproductive, deviation. But turning them away felt like a level of petty conflict he didn't have the energy for.

  "Come in," he said simply, stepping back and holding the door open. "Please, take a seat."

  He gestured to the armchairs in the living room as they stepped inside. The silent man moved with a surprising, quiet grace for his size, taking a seat with a heavy, reluctant weight.

  "I'm afraid I don't have anything to offer you this time," Mark added, the memory of the shared meal a strange, distant thing. "I haven't had a chance to restock properly."

  They settled into the armchairs, the healer and her silent companion, forming a strange, impromptu committee in his living room. The silence that followed was thick and uncomfortable.

  Tori sat on the edge of her seat, her earlier, forced apology having apparently used up her entire supply of social grace for the day. She seemed to be studying the grain of the wooden floor with the intensity of a master carpenter. Her companion, the big man, was no more comfortable. He sat back in the plush chair, his large frame looking comically out of place against the fine upholstery. His gaze drifted around the room, taking in the polished pipes and the elegant woodwork with a quiet, unreadable expression.

  Mark let the quiet stretch for a moment longer. He was the host, and apparently this was his unwanted meeting to run.

  "Are you going to introduce your friend?" he finally asked, his voice even. He directed the question at Tori.

  The question seemed to snap her out of a trance. She jumped slightly, her head jerking up from its inspection of the floorboards.

  "Oh. Right. Yes," she stammered, a faint blush creeping up her neck. "This is Silas. He… he works at the infirmary." She gestured vaguely in the man's direction. "He wanted to… visit. See how you were recovering after everything."

  The large man, Silas, seemed to decide that Tori’s fumbling introduction was inadequate. He leaned forward slightly, the chair groaning in protest, and took control of the conversation. His voice was low and quiet, yet it filled the room with an undeniable, ancient authority.

  "I'm here, boy, because I have an arrangement with the First Librarian," he stated simply, his gaze direct and unflinching.

  The word "boy" wasn't an insult. It was a simple, factual statement of the vast, unseen gulf of age and experience that separated them. Mark felt it instantly. This was a man who looked in his early 50s at worst, but could be so much older to the odd way the magics worked here.

  Silas's sharp gaze flicked to Tori for a fraction of a second, a silent, almost imperceptible critique, before returning to Mark. "Knowledge, she prefers these days, called in an old favor I owed her," he continued, the words measured and precise. "And yes, before you ask, Oracles do ask for favors. It's a rare, transactional and usually very inconvenient thing."

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  He let that sink in before delivering the core of his message, his voice a dry, humorless rasp.

  "She wanted to make sure you weren't being filled with stupid information." He paused, his gaze deliberately, pointedly, settling back on Tori.

  The silence that followed was heavy with the weight of Silas’s pronouncement. Tori seemed to shrink in her chair, the silent critique having landed with unerring accuracy.

  "I am four centuries old, boy," Silas continued, his gaze unwavering. "I've seen the rise and fall of great men. I've seen men with no magic build legacies that stood for generations, and I've seen men at the peak of Jade, desperate for every scrap of power, who left nothing but dust and regret in their wake."

  He leaned back, the armchair groaning under his weight, his expression turning from critique to something more akin to counsel. "Magic is a tool, not a destination. And for a man of forty-plus, choosing to start down that path," he stressed the word, a quiet, deliberate emphasis, "choosing... well, endless exercise is not going to be the foundation you think it is."

  The statement, meant to be a profound moment of great wisdom from this ancient master, snagged on a simple, incorrect detail. Mark couldn't let it go. It was an obvious error in observation, it needed to be corrected.

  "I'm thirty-two," he said, the words simple and direct.

  Silas stopped. He gave Mark a long, slow, assessing look, his sharp eyes scanning him from head to toe as if re-evaluating a rock he'd misjudged. The silence stretched.

  "Well," Silas rumbled finally, his face completely expressionless. "Perhaps the exercise will do you some good after all."

  Mark couldn't tell if the old man's deadpan delivery was a form of humor he had yet to understand, or the most backhanded insult he had ever received, either way he admitted to himself it was phenomenal either way.

  The sound from the other chair, however, was less ambiguous. It was a noise suspiciously like a choked snort. He glanced over at Tori. Her face was bright red, her shoulders were shaking slightly, and she was pressing her lips together so hard they had turned white, a desperate and failing battle against a wave of laughter.

  The moment, as bizarre as it was, acted as a strange kind of release valve. The tension that had been building in Mark's shoulders since he'd opened the door eased fractionally. An insult, a joke at his expense... it was a piece of familiar, mundane social interaction in a world that had offered him very little of it. It was, in its own strange way, normal.

  Silas, for his part, seemed completely unconcerned with their reactions. He simply continued his lecture, not bothering to wait for questions, a man with a task to complete and little patience for pleasantries.

  "The girls made a mistake in their explanation," he rumbled, his gaze fixed on Mark, completely ignoring Tori's continued struggle for composure. "The Tiers do not grant the strength of supermen. They grant potential. A man with a Garnet Heart can become six times stronger than a mundane, but he has to train for it. He has to work for it, maintain it. He can train to be faster, to have a better memory, to endure more. But it is not a gift given freely. It is a door unlocked."

  He let that sink in before delivering the next, less encouraging, piece of the truth.

  "That being said," he continued, his tone as flat and unforgiving as a slab of granite, "you are still, in all likelihood, the weakest twig in this entire town. Because here, every child is taught proper physical conditioning as part of their basic schooling. And every trade, from the baker to the smith to the scout, is a practical, physical endeavor. They are already halfway to that unlocked door. You are still trying to find the key."

  An unlocked door. That was an unusual and very direct way to describe the path to magic, positioned a lot more as the choice over the complexities of it, and no lock or gate keeper. He wasn't just weak, he was untrained. He wasn't a permanent failure, he was a project at phase zero. It was a problem with a potential solution. Where is this door?

  The idea lingered for a moment, the first solid piece of ground he'd felt in days. But a plan required understanding all involved. He looked at the old man, the one who had just realigned the path of his own potential future.

  He made a mental note, already visualising a micro study plan for his library visit, and what needed to be recorded in his book for targets, goals. Then he turned on the thought to something with a far greater scope he almost missed.

  "You never told me who you are," Mark stated, his voice quiet but direct. "Just that Knowledge sent you." He met the man's ancient, patient eyes. "So, who are you, Mr Silas?"

  A low "humph" rumbled in Silas's chest, a sound of ageless annoyance. "Drop the Mr. I am old, boy," he said simply. "I have had a life, once lived, and now I have the comfort of my solitude." He gave Mark a look that was both dismissive and instructive. "With my age, you should have guessed I hold a Jade Heart. My stories are best left far in the past."

  He leaned forward, his earlier professorial tone gone, replaced by a blunt, final assessment of his own involvement. "I don't like games. I don't want to be here. And when this is done, I would very much prefer to stay out of the crap that you seem to be wading through."

  The finality was absolute. This was a one-time consultation, a favor being paid. But then, for the first time, something shifted in the old man's expression. A slow, crooked smile touched the corner of his mouth, a gesture that held no humor, only the immense weight of lived experience.

  "Take it as advice, boy," Silas said, his voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial rumble. "It is never too late to choose a new path." He looked directly at Mark, and in his eyes, Mark saw a flicker of a shared, unspoken truth. "Regardless of your history. Forgotten, lost or displaced."

  The advice, as blunt and strange as it was, settled into the quiet space in Mark's mind where his plans were supposed to be. The question that there was a choice to come.

  "That's the last of the free advice, boy," Silas rumbled, his crooked smile fading as he shifted back into the role of reluctant messenger. "My part of the bargain with Knowledge is simple. I was to tell you that you should be spending as much time with your nose in a book as you do sweating on the floor. You need to learn, not just train. There are choices and potential, not guarantees."

  Pausing for a few moments, his eyes flicked over to Tori. “There is something else, The girl is going to need help.” This in turn caused Tori to sharply turn and glare at him, “Magic here is used as an absolute, its crap taught to empower people, makes them lazy. Tori can explain.”

  There was no overwhelming confidence in her voice, she looked like she was attempting to shrink into the chair before Silas coughed, she spoke. “It’s been brought to my understanding that I have a lot to learn.”

  A quick look from Silas had her continue, “My Heart of the Healer isn’t an issue, however I am also a Dreamer, and I need help with myself before I can truly help others.”

  “What the girl is asking for is your help, you already helped more than she realises on that beach, now she needs to learn.” Silas ended her request, blunt and revealing, he was the second figure on the beach.

  Mark let the weight of that settle, how could he help, would he? And before he finished the thought he had already partially agreed, “After what happened, this is a great deal to ask to ask, but I will give it the consideration it is due.”

  Silas sighed, a flicker of something that might have been grudging fairness in his eyes. "That’s more than she deserves, so," he continued, "I'll entertain a question or two. About things that would be obvious to anyone actually born here." He held up a thick, calloused finger, the condition absolute. "But that does not include questions about me. My history is my own."

  The offer was a small, unexpected opportunity, probably to help with Tori. Still a chance to fill in one of the thousand blank spaces on his mental plan with data from a reliable, if unwilling, source. He had to choose the right question. The political landscape, the stakeholders, the risks... This could be the start, the failed project’s new footing.

  With some consideration, Mark leaned forward, seizing the moment. "The guilds," he began, the words forming a logical chain of recent events. "Alex Smith from the Masons... Dawn's report on me, and on his involvement... What are their intentions? It can't be as simple as your Oracles providing handouts."

  Silas opened his mouth to reply, a deep, regretful sigh already forming in his chest-

  BOOM.

  The sound wasn't just heard, it was felt. A single, titanic impact against the front door, a physical shockwave that vibrated up from the floorboards and rattled the glass in the window frame.

  Mark jolted, his heart leaping into his throat. Beside him, Tori gasped, instinctively rising halfway from her seat, her face panicked in alarm.

  Silas, however, did not move. He didn't even flinch. His ancient eyes simply narrowed, his gaze fixed on the heavy wooden door as if it had just presented him with the most tedious and unwelcome interruption of his long, quiet life.