Chapter Text
The moon is full, the boy notices, as he pretends to sleep. There’s no one there to assure he’s sleeping, no one he has to act in front of. But there is a sort of habit to it. It is late. By all rules, banal that they are, he should be asleep. There is an enforced and rigid schedule to his life that he feels an obligation of duty towards. But instead he lies in bed, eyes closed, pretending that the bright moonlight does not somehow still cast a disturbance upon him.
It is in the middle of this charade that he notices something else. A shadow flickering at the edge of the window, and a faint rustle. Cloth against metal, perhaps. The way the light falls shifts. Instinctively, his eyes open, and his fingers close tight around the knife he keeps diligently under his pillow.
He isn’t fearful when he sees the figure crouched just below the window, backlit in pale moonlight. Instead, he watches, and waits. Whatever this is, it isn’t terribly large or broad. A slight, crouched figure- a person, a girl- with long white hair pulled loosely into a plait and thrown over the shoulder. Crimson eyes glinted oddly at him from across the room, reflecting what little light was present in a distinctly inhuman manner.
They made eye contact for half a second, before he lunged.
As a boy of twelve summers, he had already received some combat training. At least enough for proper self defense, that any child of noble birth in the Empire should be capable of. His blade is drawn in one swift motion, the same arm casting aside his blankets. The distance between them closes in a mere moment, and he slashes his knife downwards at her. She evades this easily, surprising him with her swiftness, before bringing up her arm in a responding blow. Her cupped fist slams into the side of his head, over his ear, and immediately he feels his ears pop and ring. He staggers, and feels a heavy weight slam into his chest. The girl throws her full body weight up against him, slamming him to the floor. The knife is sent flying uselessly into a dark corner of his bedroom. His back meets the cool hardness of the floor, and he feels the breath leave his lungs. In this moment of weakness, she seems to attempt to pin him, shoving her knees into his ribs.
He’s been hit before, but never by another child. There’s a fresh wave of emotion to it, after years of being treated with fear and deference by his peers. Pain and discomfort rings up his body, and an odd rage builds up. The primal urge to return the blow, to fight back, undeniable to the living. One of his hands claws up blindly, desperately, and drags into a grip around her long braid. He pulls with that same blind anger, and feels something smooth and soft come loose in his hand. The girl hisses furiously in pain, and responds by slamming her fist directly into his nose.
He feels blood flood his nostrils, hot and uncomfortable, but the weight is lifted from his chest. Darkness seeps in from the edge of his vision.
He wakes to a servant’s face - worried and pinched- far too close to his own. They tut and fuss and bite their lip worriedly at the blood on his face. He closes his hand tight around the soft thing still clutched in his hand. The motions of patching him up and getting him ready for the day are passed through. The servant is assured that all is well, he simply tripped. Nothing happened. He is not questioned. He knows his father will hear of it anyway, and he is curious about the results of that in an empty, dreadful way.
Not soon enough, the servant leaves him.
There, alone in his room in the breaths between lessons and meals and sleep, he opens his palm to investigate the evidence of his visitor:
A red ribbon, still half-tied in a bow, and half crushed in his palm.
He lets his fingers close around it again, before slipping it in his pocket.
The Aphistrea are tools.
This is well known, most people imported from the provinces are thought as little more than such. They provide interesting data regarding organic physiology and it’s compatibility with magitek. They lived a spartan, nomadic lifestyle, even from their earliest history.
And, in quiet tones, are actually quite amenable to allowing the lower ranking members of their family to be gainfully employed as test subjects for a variety of studies. Studies they often led themselves, with some Imperial supervision and skimming of the results. Strong and more durable than most, and prone to a spectacular ability for regeneration, they had quite a deal of success in this field. Even if it was built on the backs of the less fortunate members of their clan.
They stand out of course as foreigners within the Empire’s borders, but also for their eyes: crimson, reflective, inhuman. The eyes of a predator. Honed for flawless vision even in utter darkness.
None of this information is terribly hard to find. The palace library is full of literature concerning the conquests of his forebears. Often flowery and self praising, but literature nonetheless.
The girl was a tool.
His fingers twist against the ribbon still stashed in his pocket.
Or so he is told. He spends enough time in the company of books to know they are still written by people. And people have a great capacity to lie, to misunderstand, and to underestimate.
Just as he had. The dull ache in his nose still reminds him of this fact.
He has a curiosity to sate. And it seems that literature will be unable to fulfill it.
After weeks of pointed questions and insistence,he is finally granted his wish from a rather nervous and pliable tutor. An encounter, however brief, with one of these “tools”. One of these Aphistrea. There is a single-minded curiosity that has driven him in the following weeks.
Though he has clouded the true source of his curiosity behind claims of wishing to know more of the people ‘benefitting’ from the Empire’s ‘generosity’ and ‘support’, he knows his truth. What he truly seeks from this investigation.
He expects they will bring in only weaker members. Someone who would be a non-issue in the presence of the many guards of the palace and its halls. This is what he is hoping for, despite all odds. While he is assured that at their peak strength, they are worth some urge of curiosity, that is not what he seeks right now. He seeks one of his peers in their ranks.
A girl his age.
A child.
And what could be weaker than a child, in a clan of people like that?
His expectations are not shattered when the door opens, and two people are guided inside. One is a tall, hooded woman that he gives little mind to. The other-
He feels himself grin.
In the full light of the study, he can see her more clearly. She is, as he assessed, a girl of around his age. She was slight, but still rather sinewy. Strong looking. Her hair was pulled into a loose braid, still pulled over her shoulder, a plain tie keeping it in place.
Her eyes meet his, crimson and glassy in the daylight, and his hand curls tight around the crucial memento in his pocket.
Without a word, he stands from his chair and ignores all gentle, keening protests from his tutor and the subtle, defensive moves of the escort of guards that had accompanied his guests. Neither were in a proper standing to stop him, anyway.
The girl’s eyes widen, and he sees her shoulders tense with that same power that knocked the breath from him. And he watches those same shoulders drop in surprise as he pulls her ribbon from his pocket and- almost smugly- offers it out to her.
“Thank you for coming. I’d like to see you more often. So I will make it so.”