A chill wind, redolent with stale oil and burnt sugar, snaked through the Brass & Cog Tavern. Alaric, a quiet eddy in the boisterous flow of patrons, sat hunched over a steaming mug of spiced ale, his gaze fixed on the shifting motes of dust dancing in the dim light. He’d traded the last of his salvaged chrono-lenses for the promise of information, a currency often more valuable than coin in Veridia’s underbelly.
Elara, the tavern’s proprietress—a woman with eyes that had seen too much and missed nothing—leaned against the polished brass rail. She confirmed his vague inquiries about ‘unregistered temporal anomalies.’ To find the more dangerous, bounty-laden aberrations, she explained, he needed to consult the Chronal Registry at the Archivist’s Citadel.
“Doesn’t seem like your usual haunt, does it, love?” Elara’s voice, a gravelly purr, barely carried over the din. She wiped down the counter with a practiced motion. “A scholar like you, digging through the deep temporal currents. Most folks just want to know when the next airship arrives.”
Alaric’s lips, usually pressed into a thin line, curved slightly. He valued the quiet observation of a Chrono-Scribe, not the clamor of crowds. His secret, however, demanded he navigate both worlds.
“Registries… and officials?” he murmured, a faint echo of the Sunder-Veins’ rough lessons lingering in his mind. The city was a maze of explicit and implicit rules, each turn a potential pitfall.
Elara laughed, a sound like grinding gears. “You truly are new to Veridia’s… finer points, aren’t you, oppa? The Archivist’s Citadel, it’s the grand hub in the city’s heart. Where all the records are kept, from birth certificates to bounty scrolls. The Chrono-Scribes are the city lord’s own record-keepers, those who manage the temporal ebb and flow.”
Darkness had long swallowed the last sliver of the sun, painting the city in shades of lamp-glow and shadow. Visiting the Citadel tonight would be futile. He’d gather his thoughts, perhaps refine his Chronoscrying filters, then head out in the morning.
“But why,” Elara asked, her gaze sharpening, “are you asking about aberrations? Don’t tell me, you’re another one of those… Spark-Harvesters?”
Alaric tilted his head. “Spark-Harvesters?”
Elara sighed, her expression a mix of pity and exasperation. “Oh, you know. The deluded lot. They believe if they hunt down enough Chrono-Aberrations, they can absorb their ‘Aetherial Spark’ and become Chrono-Scribes themselves. Gain magical power, ascend the social ladder.” She shook her head. “Fools. Most just end up scattered temporal dust.”
Before Alaric could respond, a heavy hand clapped down on his shoulder. He flinched, his muscles tensing, a reflex from the recent skirmish. The ale sloshed. A tremor ran through the worn wooden tabletop.
“Lena, sweetling, that’s where you’re wrong!” A gruff voice rumbled. “It ain’t no superstition. It’s the truth. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. The spark… it *can* be harvested.”
The speaker was a man in his late thirties, early forties. Unkempt, greying hair framed a face etched with the weariness of hard living. His beard, a wiry scrub, bristled. Yet, beneath the grime, his eyes held a startling, almost desperate clarity.
“Silas!” Elara exclaimed, relief mixing with exasperation. “You’re alive? We thought the Veridian Vortex had claimed you!”
“Not me, lass! Not until I feel the true Spark within me!” Silas pulled out a stool, the legs scraping loudly across the floor, and sat down with a grunt. His movements were broad, almost clumsy, but held a latent strength.
Three other men, hulking figures armed with clunky, steam-powered carbines and crude, spiked gauntlets, followed Silas. They moved with the confident swagger of those who faced danger regularly, though their grimy clothes suggested they rarely triumphed without cost.
Alaric subtly brushed Silas’s hand from his shoulder. His touch lingered, a faint temporal echo of the previous, unwanted contact. It brought a flash of raw aggression, a memory of the scavengers. He suppressed the vision quickly.
“My apologies, friend,” Silas said, a flash of surprise in his sharp eyes. “Didn’t mean to startle you. But tell me, you were asking about the Spark? Intrigued, are we?”
Alaric nodded slowly, his mind already dissecting Silas’s words, sorting them against the sparse lore he guarded. “This… Spark. What is it, precisely?”
Silas grinned, a wide, toothy display. “Simple, young friend! Chrono-Scribes, they slay aberrations, absorb their inherent temporal energies, and grow stronger. By the same principle, an ordinary man, if he kills an aberration, can claim its temporal essence. Fuse it with his own spirit. Become a Chrono-Scribe!” His voice dropped conspiratorially. “I’ve seen it, I tell you. Heard tales of men who rose from nothing.”
“That’s why the four of us,” one of his companions, a man with a scarred cheek and a perpetually furrowed brow, chimed in, “we hunt the beasts. For the Spark!”
“Taken down three already!” another added, thumping his chest with a meaty fist. “Almost there, we are!”
Three aberrations. Alaric’s brow furrowed. The creatures he knew, the ones he sought, could fell entire companies of guardsmen, shatter clockwork automatons, and twist the very fabric of local time. Three such encounters would leave these men as nothing but temporal dust and scattered bone fragments.
“Three, you say?” Alaric’s voice was low, devoid of judgment. “And one of you has already… ascended?”
Silas and his crew, along with several other patrons within earshot, erupted in laughter. It was a harsh, cynical sound.
“Ascended?” Silas wiped a tear from his eye. “Not likely, friend! In all Veridia, there’s but five true Chrono-Scribes – the Lord-Governor and his four Chronal Knights. If any of us had the Spark, you’d know it. We’d be leading the charge, not drinking cheap ale.”
“Almost died every time, we did,” the scarred man grumbled, his earlier bravado replaced by a grim memory. “These beasts… they’re no joke, even the small ones.”
Alaric processed this. A city of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, yet only five true wielders of temporal magic. It explained the scarcity, the desperate longing, the wild superstition.
Silas’s gaze fell to Alaric’s satchel, a simple leather affair, worn smooth by countless journeys. “You carry no obvious weapons, young one. Your equipment seems… lacking for aberration hunting. How do you manage?”
Alaric reached into a pouch. Instead of steel or a steam-carbine, he produced a small, exquisitely crafted time-glass. It wasn’t meant for combat, but for tracking faint temporal echoes, for minute adjustments. Its surface shimmered with faint, barely perceptible ripples.
The Spark-Harvesters leaned in, their expressions a mix of curiosity and confusion.
“That’s… what is that?” the scarred man asked, poking at it with a calloused finger. “Some kind of fancy compass?”
“For navigating the chronal currents,” Alaric replied simply. “And discerning temporal distortions.”
“Distortions, eh?” Silas squinted. “Never seen one like it. Looks… delicate. What kind of beasts do you hunt with a thing like that?”
“The more subtle ones,” Alaric responded, omitting the full truth. The time-glass was for tracking *past* events, for reconstructing a fragmented reality. For him, a weapon was often unnecessary, the immediate past his shield and sword.
“Well, say,” Silas leaned forward, his voice taking on a persuasive tone. “We could use a marksman, someone with a steady hand. Fancy joining us on a hunt? We’re heading out to the Ironwood Fringes tomorrow, after a Glimmer-Skitter.”
Alaric shook his head. “I appreciate the offer, but my path diverges.” His targets were of a far more dangerous calibre than a ‘Glimmer-Skitter’—a small, time-displacing insectoid creature, barely more than a nuisance. He couldn’t risk exposing his true abilities, nor did their crude methods align with his own.
Silas shrugged, a hint of regret in his eyes. “Pity. But the offer stands, should you reconsider.”
Alaric finished his ale, the spiced warmth a stark contrast to the cold calculation in his mind. He accepted a room key from Elara and ascended the groaning stairs to the second floor, the wooden planks protesting under his weight. As he lay on the cot, the incessant drone of the tavern below seeped through the floorboards.
“[Silas, hyungnim, why were you so keen on that quiet boy? He barely looks like he could lift a wrench.]”
“[Honestly, hyungnim, he’s so scrawny, one good whack from a Chrono-Weevil would have him weeping.]”
The Spark-Harvesters, just moments ago seemingly genial, now openly ridiculed him. It was a familiar pattern, a simple truth of human nature Alaric had observed countless times. He merely sighed, closing his eyes. People were often quick to judge, quicker still to dismiss what they didn’t understand.
“[Tsk, it’s just… reminded me of myself, once.]” Silas’s voice, though muffled, carried a note of gruff affection. “[Wandering out there, with nothing but a prayer and a pretty glass. Ten lives wouldn’t be enough to survive the Fringes like that.]”
“[Seriously, hyungnim, your kindness will be the end of you.]”
Alaric listened, a small, sad smile touching his lips. Yes. The world was full of all kinds of people, good and bad. And those who simply didn’t know any better.
---
Dawn painted the high clock towers of Veridia in streaks of pale rose and gold as Alaric stepped out of the Brass & Cog. He navigated the bustling thoroughfares, the rhythmic clanking of automatons echoing the beat of his own cautious heart, until he reached the Archivist’s Citadel. Its massive, brass-inlaid doors guarded a labyrinth of temporal records and bureaucratic halls.
Inside, the air hummed with the faint, residual temporal echoes of a thousand transactions. Alaric wove through a squabbling elderly couple arguing over a land lease dating back two centuries, finally locating the designated ‘Chronal Registrar’ for aberration bounties.
“Next!” A crisp, impatient voice cut through the murmur. Master Theron, a severe-looking man with spectacles perched precariously on his nose, peered over a stack of yellowed parchment. His eyes, devoid of warmth, swept over Alaric. “What’s your business, drifter?”
Alaric stated his purpose. Theron’s lips thinned, a look of barely concealed disdain on his face. He clearly categorized Alaric as another deluded Spark-Harvester, a common nuisance.
Revealing his true nature as a Chronoscryer, one of the last, would have Theron prostrate, begging for favors. But that would also entangle him in the city’s politics, waste precious time, and draw unwanted attention to his secret. His goal was simple: locate an aberration, neutralise it, and vanish. No need for fanfare or false identities.
“Take it. Don’t smudge the parchment. Return it immediately.” Theron pushed a thick, bound ledger across the counter. It contained precise descriptions of registered Chrono-Aberrations: their appearances, sizes, observed behaviors, temporal signatures, last known locations, and the bounties offered for their removal.
Weaker, less hostile aberrations, Alaric noted, required capture alive. The more aggressive, dangerous ones could be brought back as corpses. He understood the distinction: the faint temporal residue of lesser creatures was easily faked with ordinary animal remains. Only the profound, complex temporal imprint of a powerful aberration could be verified from a carcass.
“A word of warning, drifter,” Theron added, his voice sharper. “Even if you merely incapacitate an aberration, never abandon its remains. Bring it back to the Citadel. If the Chronal Knights don’t disperse its latent temporal energies, it could fester, creating a localised temporal feedback loop, even a pocket of chronal decay. Leaving an aberration’s corpse to rot is punishable by temporal erasure under city law. Keep that in mind.”
Alaric felt a cold shiver. The horrifying potential for unchecked temporal instability, for the very fabric of reality to unravel, was a constant concern for him. He committed Theron’s warning to memory, an additional burden on his already heavy conscience.
“Some of these creatures,” Alaric murmured, his finger tracing a description of a particularly vicious beast, “they seem quite dangerous for ordinary citizens. Do the Chronal Knights not handle these threats themselves?”
Theron scoffed, a dry, dismissive sound. “Do you think they have such leisure? The Knights maintain the city’s public order, defend against external temporal incursions. Hunting wayward aberrations? That’s for drifters like you, seeking a quick coin or a deluded path to power.”
Alaric’s gaze fell to the parchment, a familiar bitterness rising within him. If Chrono-Scribes were Veridia’s protectors, should they not prioritise the defense of its most vulnerable? Yet, it seemed few took pride in such a fundamental duty.
Leaving the bureaucratic chill of the Citadel behind, Alaric merged with the flow of street-level traffic, heading towards the city’s outskirts. The towering automatons, the bustling markets, and the grand clock towers gradually receded, replaced by crumbling districts and, eventually, the sparse, wild grasslands beyond Veridia’s formal walls.
*Time to begin.*
Satisfied that he was beyond the casual scrutiny of the city’s patrols, Alaric mentally recalled one of the entries from the ledger. *Shard-Gull. A particularly aggressive avian aberration. Its feathers, razor-sharp temporal fragments, can deflect lesser projectiles and are dropped from high altitudes. Known to prey on stray hounds and small children near the Veridian Sprawl, leaving only fragmented temporal echoes in their wake…*
He closed his eyes, extending his awareness. “Temporal Echo: Avian.”
A cacophony of sound crashed into his mind. The rustle of thousands of pigeon wings, the distant cries of gulls scavenging near the canals, the rapid, almost frantic temporal chirping of sparrows nesting in the eaves of derelict buildings. The sheer, overwhelming static of normal avian life. His concentration wavered, the influx too immense, too indistinct. He cancelled the Chronoscrying, a faint headache blooming behind his eyes.
*This approach is too broad.*
How could he isolate the specific temporal signature of a Shard-Gull amidst the temporal din of countless ordinary birds? His gift was precise, but it needed a refined query.
*A bird possessing significant temporal energy?*
He tried to filter the Chronoscrying with that specific condition. Nothing. The spell refused to activate. The raw presence of ‘temporal energy,’ much like ‘magic,’ was too vague, too amorphous a concept for his ability to target directly. It needed a more concrete temporal imprint.
*A bird that has consumed humanoid flesh, leaving a particular temporal residue?*
This time, the Chronoscrying shimmered, responding, but far too many echoes registered. It was likely that many common carrion birds scavenged the forgotten refuse of the Sprawl, including… the scattered fragments of life that the Shard-Gulls left behind. He needed a unique marker, something only the Shard-Gull itself would possess. The quiet hunt had just begun.