Chapter 120: Testdrive [pt 2]

He stood up.

The second column came and he walked into it.

That was the part Yura told the Hall about afterwards, to six clerks, with four hundred people listening and nobody at the boards. He walked into it. Straight up the middle of eleven feet of black fire with one arm across the face and the plate glowing white at the edges.

Four steps...

Five...

And he came out the far side of it still burning, inside the Warden’s reach, and put nine feet of shadow up under the jaw and out through the top of the skull.

It burned shut.

Of course it burned shut. It burned shut, and the thing threw him off, and he hit the ash rolling and came up laughing with grey in his teeth.

’It doesn’t matter how deep I cut... it genuinely does not matter at all.’

Theo stopped.

He stood still in the middle of the ring with a nine-foot blade hanging off his fist and let the Warden come, and did absolutely nothing about it, because he was thinking about a kitchen.

’Sixty-one units of turnip. Forty-seven of grain. Four of cheese.’

’It’s a stock take. It has always been a stock take. It tells me what’s in the room and how much of it there is.’

’And the panel says its Domain is the Cinderfall.’

’So how much Cinderfall is actually in this room?’

The Lycan hit him. Three ribs went under the weight of it and he let them.

’Show me.’

[Domestic Manager — surveying]

[Ash: abundant]

[Bone: 4,411 units]

[Standing timber: 96 units]

[Dark Fire: contained within one body]

[Note: this Domain has no second source]

Theo lay flat on his back in the ash with a wolf’s head coming down at him and started laughing so hard that his ribs punished him for it.

’ONE BODY!’

’It’s not the Cinderfall’s fire! It’s HIS! Every wolf in this place has been running on him the whole time, and he had to shut them down when I put the lights out, and he hasn’t got one of them lit since!’

’The Domain isn’t the room. The Domain is him.’

He got a boot into its chest and threw it off, rolled onto his front, and put both palms flat on four hundred feet of packed ash. It was warm all the way through, the way a hearthstone stays warm hours after the fire is out.

’Then I’m not cutting you any more. I’m taking it.’

He did what had been done to him at the top of a mountain pass, except this time he was not asking.

Every shadow in the ring came in.

They came off the bones and out of the craters and down off the standing trees, and they went past the Warden and into him, and the ring got brighter as they came, and the thing standing in the middle of it got dimmer.

The seams went first. Then the throat. Then the two coals in the head, going down and down like a lamp being turned off by somebody in no hurry at all.

The Lycan stopped moving.

It stood in a bright grey ring in front of a man made of everything that had been dark in it, and it turned its head once, and then again, and did not know what to do with any of it.

Theo went up it.

Boot on the knee, boot on the hip, boot on the shoulder, and the blade came down through the collar and did not stop at the collar. It swung for him and he was not on that side any more. He took the left arm off at the elbow.

It stayed off.

He took the right leg at the joint and that stayed off too, and the Warden of the Cinderfall came down on its side in its own arena with its mouth open and nothing at all coming out of it. No fire. No sound. Two dead grey eyes with the ash settling on them.

Theo crouched in front of it.

’...You’ve been alone in here a long time.’

He put his hand flat on the top of the skull and drove the Raindrop in through the base of it, and held on while the weight under his palm gave and thinned and went down into the floor with all the rest.

Then the dusk came back over the whole bowl at once, thin and dirty and everywhere.

The Shadow Fragment went off him in smoke. Raindrop shrank back to four ordinary feet of steel, and it took him a while to make his fingers let go of it. The grip had printed itself across the inside of his hand, and it was still there when he opened the fingers all the way.

Theo sat down in the ash, hard, because his legs had stopped agreeing with him.

[Limitless Body — Adaptation complete]

[Resistance acquired: Dark Fire]

[Limitless Body: 64% → 67%]

[Limitless Flow: 13.99% → 15.42%]

’...I want a bath and about nine eggs.’

Just as he was turning around, a new panel came up in front of his face and put him dead still.

[Cinderfall Warden, Lycan has entered Enraged Mode]

[All current stats will be enhanced for five minutes]

’Oh shit...’

***

[System Notice]

You all must be patient, writing is a daunting task and author is working hard to deliver the best. He shall not disappoint.

[All you have to give back to the Author is you unending loyalty, support. Your power stones belong to him, your golden tickets belong to him. And when he comes begging like a beggar that he is for gifts, pity him a little. Of course, nothing matters more than your own enjoyment of the story.]

[Thank you]