Marcus stared at the spot where Arthur had been. The boy had been taken away by the other guards, not to the dungeons, but to the infirmary for "shock." The captain's eyes narrowed. He had seen the terror on the boy's face. It was perfect. Too perfect.
He looked down at Koro, who was still moaning on a stretcher, his boneless leg flopping with every jostle. Marcus had fought trolls and goblin shamans. He had seen limbs torn off, bones shattered. He had never seen one melt.
"It was him," Koro sobbed, pointing a trembling finger at nothing. "The rat. He touched me. Just a touch."
Marcus said nothing. He crouched, examining the mud where the incident occurred. There was nothing. No scorch marks, no magical residue, no sign of anything but mud and a crushed loaf of bread. But a man's leg did not simply turn to meat. His gaze drifted toward the stables. Something had changed.
Two days later, Arthur was back in the stables. His return was met with a wall of silence and wide, fearful eyes. The other servants gave him a wide berth, shuffling away when he came near. They didn't whisper about him anymore. They didn't speak of him at all, as if saying his name would invite the same impossible fate that had befallen Koro.
A new overseer had been appointed. A man named Fendrel, thin and weaselly, who had previously managed the castle's laundry. He approached Arthur with extreme caution, stopping a good ten feet away.
"You," Fendrel said, his voice tight. He refused to make eye contact, staring at a point on the wall just above Arthur's head. "The Dragon Master wants Redflame's pit cleared. It hasn't been mucked out in a week."
A few of the nearby stable hands flinched. Redflame was Leon's prized bronze dragon. It was a magnificent, terrifying beast with a temper as fiery as its breath. Cleaning its pit was the single most dangerous and disgusting job in the entire castle. The dragon's droppings were a semi-molten mix of sulfur, acid, and half-digested bone that could burn through leather boots. It was a punishment, a way to be rid of someone without a formal execution.
"You want me… to clean it?" Arthur asked, his voice a soft rasp, playing the part of a confused, scared boy.
"Lord Valerius's orders," Fendrel said quickly, taking another step back. "He wants the 'unlucky one' kept busy. Far away from everyone else. Now get to it."
Fendrel practically ran from the stables, leaving Arthur with a rusty shovel and a rickety wheelbarrow.
The entrance to Redflame's cavern reeked of brimstone and burnt meat. A literal mountain of steaming, black dung blocked the way, piled nearly six feet high. The heat radiating from it was intense, warping the air.
This is a familiar scent, Su Ling's thoughts drifted through Arthur's mind, tinged with academic interest. The excretions of a high-energy life form. In the old world, this would be a prime ingredient for 'Turbid Pills.' A crude but effective way to temper a warrior's body. These mortals see only waste.
Arthur picked up the shovel. He walked toward the steaming pile without hesitation. The stench was overwhelming, a physical assault on the senses. To the boy Arthur, it would have been agony. To Su Ling, it was just data.
He plunged the shovel into the mass. It was like digging into hot tar mixed with gravel. He worked methodically, scooping the foul substance into the wheelbarrow, his movements efficient and steady. He ignored the burning fumes and the way the acidic filth sizzled against the metal of the shovel.
He was an hour into the work when he felt it.
A faint warmth pulsed from his right hand, the hand of ash. It wasn't a reaction to the heat of the dung. It was a specific, directed hum, a resonance. His hand was reacting to something buried deep within the pile.
Curious. Su Ling's interest sharpened. The power of unmaking reacts to entropy, to endings. This is a reaction to its opposite. A pocket of pure order within this chaos.
He kept digging, his movements unchanged. He pushed the shovel deeper, following the faint sensation. The warmth grew stronger, a clear thrum against his palm. He finally hit something that wasn't soft or yielding. It was a small, hard point of resistance.
Carefully, he used the edge of the shovel to clear away the surrounding filth. He reached in with his left hand, his fingers sinking into the warm, gritty muck. He felt around until his fingertips brushed against a small, smooth object.
He pulled it out. Lying in his grimy palm was a crystal, no bigger than a man's thumbnail. It was not like the dull Dragonblood Stone. This object glowed with its own soft, internal white light, a pure and gentle radiance that seemed to push back the oppressive gloom and stench of the cavern.
Even through the filth, he could feel its nature. It was clean.
The crystallized essence of Faith, Su Ling identified instantly. The collective spiritual energy of believers, condensed into a physical form. This dragon must have flown over a cathedral or a holy site and inadvertently inhaled it. It could not digest it, so it passed through its system, shielded by its own purity. A pearl found in the belly of a beast. What a charmingly primitive world.
Arthur glanced toward the mouth of the cavern. No one was watching. He closed his grimy hand around the crystal.
He did not will destruction. He willed the opposite.
He commanded the Ash Hand to do what it had done to the Dragonblood Stone: analyze, deconstruct not the object but its meaning, and absorb its core principle.
A torrent of energy flooded him.
It was nothing like the violent, tearing fire of the Dragonblood. This was a cool, clean river. It didn't burn or break. It washed. It flowed not through his veins, but directly into his soul, into the consciousness of Su Ling herself, replenishing a minuscule fraction of the power she had spent to cross the void.
More importantly, it fundamentally altered the vessel. The energy scoured Arthur's senses, sharpening them to an impossible degree. The world, which had been a flat painting of sight and sound, suddenly gained a new dimension.
A new faculty, Su Ling noted, a flicker of genuine satisfaction in her thoughts. This body has integrated the concept of 'gathering from waste.' It has a new classification. A Scavenger. And with it, a new sense. The Gaze of Truth.
Arthur opened his eyes.
The world was on fire with information.
He could see the faint heat shimmering off the stones. He could see the musky, orange-gold aura of the sleeping dragons in the nearby stalls. He could see the fear coming off the other stable hands as faint, flickering gray threads.
He looked at his own hands. His left hand had a dim, vital glow. His right hand, the ashen one, was a void. It did not glow; it consumed light, a tiny patch of absolute nothingness.
He had finished half the pile when he heard voices from outside the stable.
"I assure you, Lady Annelise, Redflame is perfectly docile when I am near," Leon's arrogant voice boomed, full of false modesty. "He is a creature of immense power, but he understands his master."
"He is magnificent, Sir Leon," a woman's voice replied. It was soft, melodic, and carried a weight that made the stable hands stop their work and bow their heads in reverence.
Arthur pushed his wheelbarrow toward the stable exit, his head down, just another filthy worker. He peeked from beneath his matted hair.
Leon stood there in his polished silver armor, looking every bit the heroic knight. Beside him stood a young woman. She was dressed in a simple white silken gown, her face veiled by a thin, translucent cloth. Even with the veil, her beauty was apparent, radiating a kind of purity that made the grimy courtyard seem holy. She was the Saint of the Radiant Church, Lady Annelise, said to be able to heal the sick with a touch and whose prayers could be heard by the god himself.
The stable hands and guards who saw her looked mesmerized, their faces full of awe and adoration. Arthur could see why. A brilliant, warm, white light poured from her, a beacon of faith and purity. She was a sun in human form.
He looked at her with his new eyes. His Gaze of Truth.
He saw the brilliant sun of her aura. He saw the pure, concentrated Faith that dwarfed the crystal he had just absorbed a thousand times over. It was blinding.
But it was not perfect.
Wrapped around the base of that radiant sun, like a venomous snake coiled at the root of a sacred tree, was a thread. It was a strand of utter blackness, thin and almost invisible against the overwhelming light. It was not the gray of fear or the murky red of greed. It was a sliver of pure void, an energy of absolute corruption that clung to the holiest person in the kingdom.
Leon laughed at something she said, his own aura a messy splash of prideful orange and ambitious yellow. He had no idea what he was standing next to. Nobody did.
Su Ling watched through Arthur's eyes. A smile, cold and sharp as a shard of ice, formed in the depths of her consciousness.
Well, well. What do we have here? she thought. The perfect little saint. And her perfect little secret. This experiment is becoming more interesting by the minute.