"This's gunna be a rough one, mark me."
"Makes yeh say dat?"
"He's got dat look in 'is eyes."
"... 'is eyes're closed, Raand."
"Aye, well, it's still fuckin' there."
That might have drawn a smile from him at any other time. A nice bit of absurdist Etzos humor, and from a comrade no less. But while he could hear them as well as ever, he didn't listen. He chose to blot them out. Pull back his senses so that only the bare minimum to orient and defend himself was necessary. Standing in the middle of the main courtyard in the Burned Emperor's mansion, he was a strange figure to the eye. Unnervingly still. Hands pressed palm to palm, but not in prayer. Fingers pointed out, not up. Breathing steadily, so slow and deep his chest barely moved. He is barefooted, legs clad in his breeches, tunic but no cloak.
He's unarmed. Raand's trying to remember the last time he's seen Kas like that. But they're not far away, so for that quick little sod, it don't count.
Two swords, a dagger, a karambit, and an axe, are laid out in a fan in front of him. Each one is pointing at someone holding a weapon, but not at everyone in the courtyard with him.
Miki smiled in that slow, lopsided was of his. Gesture like a golem of rock and brass remembering how to live.
He wants to test himself proper, this time.
All The Band are there, save Maxine. All the delegation, too, but for a couple of clerks out running an errand (which also explained why Maxine was not present). The rest had no shirked nor quailed when Kasoria had asked for them to aid him that afternoon, when the sun was high and hot and so bright naught would be missed in the courtyard. Four killers from the bowels of Etzos, and a half-dozen soft-handed boys who had harder eyes than when they'd left that grand city. Held swords not like children with sticks, but soldiers who knew them to be tools of life and death, and respected them as such.
Fagan Manclin was among them. Kasoria could hear his breathing, beyond his slow meditation. The nervous hitching had stopped. The hesitation it implied... was going away.
First one is nasty. First time for anything usually is. But the nasty don't last forever.
He shooed the thought away with a mental flutter. The distraction was gone. Now it was him, alone in his flesh, sole in the world... and the three half-lives that dwelled inside him. Oldest and prickly. Middle and ever-curious. Youngest and yearning to fly. They could not, did not speak, but they had... opinions. Feelings. Desires. Instincts. Kasoria had wondered before if, given enough time within a mortal, Sparks could become... thinking beings, he guessed was the word. Things aware of themselves as mortals were, able to deduce and observe the world beyond their driving urge to survive. He had felt his own mature, in a way, over the arcs. Grow... distinct, in their natures and... personalities.
Maybe they can. Maybe mortals just don't live long enough to find out.
His breathing hitched. The only outward sign of his annoyance. No time for that, no place, neither. He walled off that philosophical section of his mind and focused solely on the task ahead. He recalled the passages from the book he'd been studying from for seasons. The chapters near the end, and that alone was proof of how far he had come. He was a master now, in all but proclamation. He'd never much cared for other mages granting him that boon, festooning him with honors and titles. He worked and he practiced and he trained, until there was naught left to learn, only how you applied those skills.
But what he'd done a few trials ago... that was further along in the book than his bookmark, as it were. It seemed like he was skipping a few chapters.
Today we find out.
That was his last scrap of internal commentary. As he inhaled he expelled the monologue, communing solely with his youngest Spark. It shivered through his skin and suffused the air around him. The softly pulsing veins on his exposed flesh are suddenly shot through with green-white light, a whole map of jade scars tracking up his arms and neck. He raises his arms and murmurs a word:
Animate.
The three longer weapons - gladii and axe - rise from the sandy bricks in front of him. Pausing in the air... before turning from horizontal to near-vertical. As if invisible hands have gripped them and held them in a giard position. Eyes still closed, Kasoria allows himself a tiny smile. Pretty much exactly that, in fact. He opens his hands... and issues another command, this time with thought alone.
Come.
Karambit and dagger rise from the ground, and float swiftly towards him, as if tossed by passing ants. The slap-slap of them hitting his palms are loud in the courtyard. When his fingers fold around the hilts, he settled back into a crouch, steel raised... and opens his eyes. No longer black, but burning with ether. The three floating weapons bob slightly, as if their unseen wielders have done likewise.
Many an impressed and agog eye regards him. Even and especially those that have known him longest; who knew him back when he was another gutter rat from the Oh'Pee with no spark of... well, Spark, and no taste to get one. Now they saw a master of three arts, flexing the muscles of his latest... and they raised their weapons. So did Manclin and his men, beardless jaws set like they were when The Band trained them.
Eight against one. Now this would be a test. Above them all, the Burned Emperor observed through a window lattice, curious despite himself. He supped from his glass as the little man spoke one word more.
"Begin."
