Whisper of Blade | ✓ (Crimson #1)

Chapter 26: Company

Minerva rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. Just one more scroll.

The ceremonial hall rested in peaceful slumber but for the rustle of paper and the faint crackling of her fire orb. It hung above her head to shed light on the scrawls of ink.

Worse than scrawls ... dragon penmanship looked as if chickens had tracked black mud across paper. The words blurred as she yawned. Curling up with Mala, who was fast asleep on a soft rug a couple feet away, became a much more appealing prospect compared to slogging through another hour of dense, near indecipherable text.

It is of utmost importance to consider that though the Immortals do not find a physical manifestation necessary to bring to bear their influence on the physical world and its inhabitants, such a materialization is of great utility in the sense that said inhabitants can be forced to bend to their more powerful presence. It is difficult to fear what you cannot see and know to be real. It is all too easy to capitulate when you find a god staring you in the eyes—like you, but unlike.

Even evil can be beautiful for a time.

The next line diverged to the topic of the temporal versus the eternal. Minerva skimmed the following pages, but the writer never returned to their discussion of the Immortals, in itself a tangent from another subject.

With a groan of frustration, Minerva rolled the scroll up and slid it into its tube for storage. The wooden cylinder's clasp clicked shut. Closer. This one had been closer to what she needed. The fact that the writer painted the Immortals in a negative light differed from the legends she'd found.

People hailed them as heroes in those. Divine benefactors who granted wealth, power, or victory for a cost. They never specified the cost.

They never specified what happened after the war ended, what happened to the recipient of an Immortal's blessing when they went home.

She would be dead without the hollow place. Minerva knew that. But she would succumb to it soon, so either she waited for death to take her or figure out how escape it.

The task felt as impossible as punching her own shadow.

Before Minerva knew it, she'd hurled the cylinder at the wall perpendicular to her. The wood splintered into fragments that rained to the floor, scroll falling out and unfurling.

Dead end. In spy terms, or as Kaolin would've said, she needed a lead.

But who? Minerva scoffed—the action meant to distract her from the bitter helplessness welling up like budding tears in her eyes.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor.

With a quick hiss at Mala to wake her, Minerva scrambled to her feet. She summoned the fiery orb to her hand. The kirukkan stone on her forehead heated as it sped its pulse to the beat of her heart.

Kodak rounded the corner. Upon catching sight of her, he raised his hands. "I come unarmed."

"I'm of half a mind to attack you anyway." Minerva rolled her eyes. "I would've thought you'd learned not to wander around the palace alone." Her fire sphere dimmed before she tethered it in the air again.

"Ah, but I'm not alone." Kodak slid across the tiled floor and spun to show her the hood of his coat. Three fluffy tails spilled over the sides.

Minerva couldn't help but smile at the sight of Azuki curled up in the pocket of fabric. He blinked lazily.

"It is very nice in here," the kat said in her ear.

I'm sure it is. "As if that would have prevented you both from being murdered," Minerva answered aloud. "You were together the last time as well if my memory serves."