Elias Thorne had always deemed true connection a precise, calculating craft. Not of hearts, but of intellects, of ambition, of shared utility. Similar mental acuity, congruent Guild affiliations, aligned scholarly pursuits, comparable station within Aethelburg’s labyrinthine hierarchy. Such was the bedrock of any lasting bond, the rational expressway to a life unmarred by illogical distress. He, a clever child, had understood this, etching it into the very framework of his nascent mind. This grand principle, he thought, was the blueprint for the happiness everyone sought, even in a city as shadowed and complex as Aethelburg.
Then, the year he turned seventeen, a profound disruption shook his carefully constructed edifice. He found himself amidst an extraordinary bond, one that defied every theorem he had so meticulously authored. Maybe it had been an insidious enchantment from their first encounter, only now blooming into a truth he could not ignore. Yet, prizing himself on unassailable reason and cold logic, he dismissed it. A fleeting fascination, he told himself, a scholar’s passing interest. He brushed aside the notion of deeper feeling, a mere curiosity for a mind too keen for such trivialities.
Still, the feelings persisted. They coiled, insidious and relentless, deep within his chest. A knot of unseen emotion, bound so tightly, began to block his throat. In the end, it threatened to choke him whole.
A chime, sharp as splintering glass, pierced the stillness of his chambers. “Take me to the Spire-Gate District,” a whispered command. The message, sudden and intrusive as a forgotten oath, stole away his early morning peace. Perpetual twilight outside barely shifted, giving way to a colder, more somber grey.
Moments passed. He sat on the edge of his bed, the chill of the unheated flagstones seeping through his thin sleeping tunic. His breath hitched. Then, a muttered curse, sharp and precise, escaped him. Elias rose.
Servitors slumbered in the lower levels of the Thorne residence. No one would notice his departure. No one would question his absence. He decided he must go.
Out beyond the wrought-iron gate, a peculiar sight drew his gaze. A gilded cog-runner, its polished brass and treated steel gleaming dully beneath the arcane street-lamps, stood parked against the wall of the house across the alley. A year ago, that family had abruptly vacated, their departure swift and unannounced. New residents had claimed the manor, though Elias had never encountered them. Not surprising in this quarter, with its high walls and private spaces, each household a self-contained world. Judging from the mechanical steed, they likely possessed an older scion, someone beyond his own tender years.
That cog-runner was either carelessly abandoned before their gate or shoved into a forgotten corner of the alley, its potent engine tightly chained. It stirred a flicker of recognition within him. A potential caged. A swift force held back. Elias stared, a strange kinship forming, before he averted his eyes. A clockwork carriage, its steam hissing softly, pulled to a halt before him. He climbed inside.
During the journey, he kept his gaze fixed on the grimy viewport. But Aethelburg’s ether-current conveyances, with their dizzying sway and subtle magical hum, often unsettled him. He quickly succumbed to a familiar malaise. His vision blurred, a wave of nausea washing over him. Elias closed his eyes instead.
A persistent tremor had taken root in his stomach over the last year. He had trouble properly digesting food. Now, a cold dread began to knot beneath his ribs. He sighed, a soft, almost imperceptible sound, trying to ease the tightness lodged in his chest.
Ignoring emotions that unsettled him had become a practiced art. With enough effort, he had managed to maintain a composed façade, a mask of scholarly detachment, for an entire turn of the celestial calendar. He wore it still, stepping from the clockwork conveyance, heading into the imposing edifice of The Obsidian Spire Inn.
Inside the grand foyer, he hesitated. His lip bit hard, a sharp pain blooming. He clenched his fist, knuckles bone-white, before slowly releasing the tension. Focus. His gaze dropped to the small piece of folded vellum in his hand. A number, scrawled in an arrogant, sprawling script, marked the page. He found the corresponding door, a dark slab of burnished obsidian.
Slowly, he knocked. Three times, precise and even.
“Kaelen. Unbar this damned door.” His voice, usually so calm, held an edge of brittle command.
Silence greeted him from the other side. A hollow void. Elias felt irritation prickle his skin. He stared at the dark wood for a prolonged moment before exhaling sharply. He pounded on the door again, this time with more force. The sound echoed, a crude interruption in the inn’s hushed atmosphere.
“I command you, Kaelen! Open this portal!”
This situation, honestly, was disgusting. The imagined echoes of clandestine revelry, the scent of stale essence and illicit pleasure, made his skin crawl. Yet, Elias could not stop himself from knocking. Kaelen had explicitly summoned him. He was enduring this repulsive scene because Kaelen was the one who had infected him with that first, destabilizing malady. That corrosive truth Kaelen had first laid bare, tearing through Elias’s careful logic.
“Why in the nine hells are you summoning me when you’re off having some useless liaison, you worthless wastrel?”
Gods, this is unbearable.
This wretched farce of a scholar's youth.
---