Tempered by the Will

4 - Glamours

Vica nearly fell twice, stumbling over loose scree scattered along the uneven ground. There was no light in this tunnel, especially after Constantine shoved the stone block back into place and locked them in total darkness. How he could see where he was going she didn't know, but she followed him to the best of her ability with Bren's guiding hand on her elbow. Somehow the half-elf was able to navigate the darkness far better than she could, which meant she would have to trust him to lead her since Constantine didn't stop to offer any aid of his own.

"The walls hold living runes," murmured Bren. "Come this way, stay away from the sides."

Living runes? She didn't know what that was, but she would trust his judgment on that, too. Not that she was keen on blindly putting her hands on the walls in the first place. She shuddered at the thought of accidentally touching anything squirming and living that lingered on the stones.

"Strong wards," he added after a few seconds. "I can't feel their power right now, but I can read the sigils. Old ones, a few that I'm seeing for the first time -"

"Shut up," said Constantine, and his voice echoed around the corridor with a harsh growl. He hadn't shouted, but Vica could hear every ounce of the hostility that she was sure he wanted them to hear anyway.

She opened her mouth and sucked in a sharp breath, preparing to hiss back a retort at his rudeness, but Bren's slender fingers tightened around her elbow in a warning grip. She couldn't see him, but she turned her head to throw the half-elf a look anyway - only to find a pair of faintly gleaming eyes staring back at her. She blinked. There was no light in here to reflect off Bren's eyes; were they glowing on their own?

Elves. Fascinating.

Either way, she allowed him to distract her, and they were spared yet another argument as they continued to travel along the tunnel. The curve of it was so subtle that it felt like they were walking a straight path, and it spoke to the sheer size of the city that these walls encapsulated.

How much farther, wondered Vica some time later. She was no stranger to walking long distances - she'd come from the backwoods all the way to the Capital on foot, after all - but there was something disheartening and exhausting about walking blind for hours, not knowing when they would reach their destination.

Until Bren tugged on her arm and brought her to a halt. She waited in silence, knowing better than to ask aloud whether they had finally arrived. The last thing she needed was for Constantine to sneer at her and leave without letting her into the city proper.

The sound of clanking, grinding metal was the only warning she had before a stream of light flooded her eyes. Vica flinched away and shielded her face from it with a hasty hand over her eyes, and she felt Bren recoil as well when his fingers dug into her arm.

She blinked hard and lowered her hand once she was sure she hadn't gone blind and found Constantine staring at her from the hole had just revealed in the wall. And while her vision was still blurry and spotted, she thought she saw his eyes glance down to where Bren clutched at her elbow.

"Out. Now."

She scowled but obeyed the unkind command, and this time it was she who pulled the half-elf out into the open. It wasn't as bright as she had thought it was - they were in some shaded, grimy alleyway bordered on both sides by tall, unkempt wooden buildings that leaned a little too much to be entirely stable. She frowned up at them as she took a few more cautious steps forward, ready to leap back into the tunnel if the structures started groaning and collapsing over her head.

The sound of metal clanking against stone made her turn back around to see Constantine replacing the door.

Or - what should have been a door, that is. Her mouth opened in a surprised gape when she saw nothing at all after he straightened and moved away from the wall. Gray and white stone and nothing else -

"A glamour," Bren murmured. He smoothed back his silvery white hair with a slow pat. "And an illusory ward for further concealment. In a poor district like this, I expect it's next to impossible to find. Very good."

A glamour, thought Vica. She turned to look at Constantine with curious eyes. Of course he could suppress a mage, but did that give him some kind of immunity to illusions, too? His anti-magic hadn't dismantled it, but that didn't mean he couldn't see through the glamour himself.

Which raised the question of why he could negate a mage's power but not existing constructs. She looked back at the wall to find the illusion was still in place; she could see only unmarked, continuous stone.

Eternal mysteries. Constantine's uncanny Resistance was as confusing as he was.

They left the alleyway, skirting past at least a dozen drunken bodies sprawled along the street. There were some beggars sitting about, too, but most of them drew away instead of coming closer to ask for alms. Vica knew that she was by far the most harmless looking of the trio, so it was either Constantine's simmering, aggressive aura or Bren's odd appearance that made them so leery of approaching.

And the half-elf had been right: this was a poor district, marked by almost complete dilapidation and squalid shacks and tenements. The towns she had passed through to get to the Capital had their own distinct economic strata, but this? These were true slums. She glanced at the wide-eyed children who squatted next to dirty buildings, digging through refuse heaps for scraps. Hot bile rose in her throat.

"Where is this?" she asked Bren, and he gave her a small smile.

"The closer to the heart of the Capital, the better it gets," he said. "Don't mind any of this."

He hadn't answered her question, but she let it go when she detected a note of unconcerned dismissal in his voice. He didn't care, she realized. The sight of all of this - it didn't bother him in the slightest except for the fact that it marked how far they were from their destination.

She looked down at her feet and tried to avoid eye contact with every other wretched soul they had to pass by. She couldn't stand to feel so useless and unable to help those who were so obviously in need, but she had no rations to give them, and no money, either. Kind words and soft looks were far from what these people needed, and that was about all she could offer them now.

To think that the grand Capital could be home to such palpable misery. From a distant hilltop, all she had seen was gleaming beauty and towering spires, the elegant roofs of golden temples reaching for the sky. Of this? Nothing. How could such contradictory conditions coexist?

She glanced up at the back of Constantine's cloak every once in a while as they walked on, wondering when they would stop just as she had when they were in the darkened tunnel in the city walls. If she thought it would amount to much more than a blow to her pride, she would have asked him outright, but she knew that he would only give her a condescending look before proceeding to ignore her once more.

Bren had no such misgivings, but then again, he found little success himself. "This isn't toward the central district," he said. "Where are we going?"

Constantine glanced over his shoulder and looked him up and down before facing forward again. "Why?" he asked. "If you don't like my answer, are you going to leave?"

Bren said nothing to that, and Vica had to tamp down on the urge to kick Constantine in the back of his legs. Ass. Well, if he wanted to leave so badly, then he could go and piss off into the wilderness again once he had his money for all she cared. She didn't have the time or the patience to deal with him any longer if he was going to continue like this.

Constantine walked on without another word, leading them through a dozen winding, filthy streets, until at long last he stopped in front of a large, box-shaped two story building. It was far from elegant, but it was far less dingy than what Vica had seen so far of the Capital. Only then did she realize with a sweeping look around her that Constantine had led them clear out of the slums. While this area was by no means a moneyed one, at least there were actual upright buildings here that weren't half-broken.

And there were voices coming from inside, too. Vica had been so numb to her surroundings that she hadn't even noticed that there were more people on the streets here, some men and women going about their business at a bustling pace. Instead of an aura of desolate poverty, she could feel only mundane clumsiness now all around her.

It was a relief to feel something so ordinary, so unassuming, but it couldn't erase the sight of skin-and-bones children from her memory. Vica looked back as if she might see them just behind her on the street.

Constantine shared a quiet word with a young boy standing outside the door before dropping something into his hand. A coin? Vica craned her neck around him to try to see for herself - and gasped when she felt Constantine's hand slip and tangle in her hair. The sensation of his palm against the back of her head was jarringly familiar, but she tried to not think of that when he turned his head and stared down into her upturned face.

Out of her peripheral vision, she saw the boy rush off with his prize, but that was the least of her worries when he suddenly brought his face so close to hers that she could feel his breath ghosting over her lips.

"We're staying out here," he said, and although his voice was so quiet that it was no louder than a murmur, his every syllable crackled between them like strikes of lightning. "No talking to anyone. Pull your hood up."

"Won't someone recognize you?" she asked, keeping her voice just as low. Someone entered into the building behind them, but they must have thought that she and Constantine were engaging in public necking rather than discussing life and death matters. "The kill order on you -"

"If they want trouble, sure," he answered. "But every mage in the city will recognize your face, and they want you more. Hood."

This time, she listened. Behind her, Bren did the same without any prompting even though he couldn't have heard their whispered conversation, and then the three of them stood off to the side in a huddle to avoid prying eyes. In the meantime, Vica took the opportunity to watch Constantine more closely than she had been able to for a while.

He hadn't had to touch her like that, she thought. Entirely needless. He could have just told her all of that with a whispered word in her ear, but he had put his hand in her hair and come in close as if he'd been about to -

Well, but that was Constantine. Unpredictable and moody, stormy one second and like stone the next. He had been doing his very best to ignore her for days now, making an exception only for their vicious arguments that always ended with her wanting to throw something sharp and heavy at him. But here he was again, flipped the other way once more with no warning at all.

Vica scowled. If he thought he was confusing her with these games, then he was in for a disappointing surprise. She wouldn't deny her attraction to him, but she was human and therefore justifiably prone to human weakness. She could feel strange things whenever he touched her and yet ignore them just the same. Easily.

And she would prove it, too.

"Sir."

Vica, remembering Constantine's warning to keep to herself, didn't look around him at the sound of the young boy's voice. It had to have been almost a half hour. Where had the boy gone?

"Where does he want to meet?" asked Constantine.

"By the South Wall. There's a place called the Ravenwood Tavern. He says he'll be there by the time you reach it."

Constantine flipped the boy another coin and nodded him away before looking back at Vica and Bren.

"Let's move."