#gate building

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When Nim is gone, Vex smells the sulphur.

She turns in the wrap of Percy's arms and sees smoke overflowing his collar. It slinks and curls down his body, down to where Vex knows it will pool around his feet.

"Percy?"

He doesn't answer, doesn't blink. Doesn't look to her. His whole body is flexed and nearly vibrating, strained with tension. Percy's trousers are tented between them, but Vex doesn't think the state of his cock is what's driving him, not right now. He's staring wide-eyed at the spot Nim vanished from, with a grin that pulls his lips back from his teeth. His breath is short and stepped with effort, and he's clenching tight around something he won't let go of.

Another plume of smoke overflows his collar.

"Percy," Vex says again, more firmly this time, and presses her palm to his cheek. The touch catches his attention and his eyes dart toward her hand. She tips his face down toward hers. "Look at me, darling."

He does, but doesn't blink. Percy's eyes are still too wide behind his lenses, still wild with victory. "She's gone. It worked. It worked."

"It did," Vex agrees. "But it's done now. Time to let it go, Percy. Whatever you're holding on to, darling, let it go."

For a moment, Vex isn't sure he will. And then he closes his eyes, and as he exhales a steam of aether stretched thin rises off the Glade around them, sparkling like silver dust in the moonlight. As it evaporates the slack returns to Percy's arms and his hands relax around her waist.

"What was it?" Vex asks.

His answer is delayed, distracted. When Percy opens his eyes they drift, still smoke-stained. "A spell. Something Perran taught me."

And then suddenly, abruptly, Percy's wandering eyes lock on to Vex. All distraction is gone, and Vex finds herself in the cross-haired scope of Percy's attention. He stares down at her with an intensity that floods her mouth with sugar and sends a shiver of static skipping down her spine.

He wants.

A breeze ripples the grass behind her, teasing up under the back of her loose shirt. She feels the eyes of the Glade turning toward them again, with the same captivated focus she sees in Percy.

He wants you, the Collector suggests. He wants to seed the garden.

"Seed the garden…" echoes Percy in a whisper.

It makes Vex's breath catch, to hear the words of the Suggestion that turns the gears of Percy's mind creeping into the Collector's chant, to see Percy being dragged along behind it. They've barely started, and already the lines are blurring.

Percy's hands slide up, just far enough to come off her leggings and find the bare skin above them. His eyes slip down the collar of her shirt, down to where his hidden hands are warm around her waist. "Vex. I-- " He swallows, and his fingers twitch where they're wrapped around her. He lifts his eyes back up and shows her the mixture of want and worry he's drowning in. "I was able to distract myself, before. Manage it. But, ah… I think with, with the-- the everything -- it's now becoming a bit… unmanageable."

The urgency threaded through his stammering etches an eager, feverish line down to where Vex can't stop flexing and twitching around a bright, flaring ache. She's warm but wants to be warmer, wants Percy's hot breath on her skin, wants the heat of his body over her and inside her, wants to be pressed into the grass--

"Vex," Percy says again. His voice is thicker, more strained. He leans closer, tipping his face into her hair, and inhales deeply. "Vex'ahlia." His fingers twitch around her waist again, as though it's taking a great effort to hold them still against her skin. "It's so strong. Perran's spell, the fruit, this place. All of it. Vex, please. It will make a puppet of me. I need to know you're the one holding my strings."

The Collector's Glade leans in. The tree line circling the clearing was thirty feet away a moment ago, and now it's a dozen at most. There's less space between the trunks, and the underbrush between them is thicker, the scent of blossoms heavier. Around their feet, the grass grows longer, denser. It becomes the grass Vex feels the phantom of around her, a ghostly, beckoning texture tickling up her sides.

---

"How fucking dumb do you think I am, Morvaris?" Fenlara is already reaching for the conjuration aether tied to her cat before Wysaris finishes speaking. She yanks her familiar out of the tavern through a sliver of the Feywild and drops it on the back of Wysaris' neck with its claws out. Wysaris shouts, and his body weight immediately shifts off Fenlara as he reaches backward for the clawed, biting thing attacking him. It's just enough Fenlara can twist out from under the press of his boot. Blind him! Fenlara screams into her cat, scrambling forward and back up onto her feet. Scratch his fucking eyes out! Her cat spits and Wysaris shouts again — "You fucking bitch!" — but Fenlara doesn't look back. She sprints toward the lane, knowing she can't waste a second of the precious time the cat is buying her to get away, get away, get the fuck away— Fenlara's entire body suddenly locks mid-stride. She gets a fleeting glimpse of a figure melting out of invisibility ten paces ahead at the junction where the alley meets the back lane before the momentum she's no longer in control of propels her shoulder into the wall. Fenlara's body twists around and her face slams hard into the stone with a sickening crack. White, nauseating pressure explodes behind her eyes. A deafening ringing fills her ears. Reality distorts into fragments. Fenlara blinks, trying to understand why she's laying on cobbles and crumpled on her side. Salt stings her eyes. Something wet and warm and metallic tasting slips over her lip and into her mouth. She tries to reach up to wipe at the drip but her arm is dead again. Both her arms are dead. Her legs are dead. A cat hisses. "Get this fucking thing off me!" someone shouts. Where am I? What's happening? Fenlara can't move her head. Her eyes strain at the edges of her peripheral vision, searching for the source of the shouting. "It's just a cat you idiot." Legs walk past her. The cat's next yelp is cut short. The pressure behind her nose and her eyes hurts. It hurts a lot. "Are you sure it's her?" "Of course I'm fucking sure. She tore a door off its hinges with magic vines, then dropped a fucking cat on me out of thin air." Through the pain, Fenlara feels the faint, slow trickle of magic flowing into her. The hand wearing the ring is trying to flex, is straining with effort to break through paralysis and dig Fenlara's fingers into the cracks between cobblestones to reach the earth so she can do more than sip from the air's feeble supply of aether. The ooze of blood out Fenlara's nose slows. Then stops. I can't move, Fenlara thinks slowly. Why can't I move? She blinks, and the next time Fenlara opens her eyes the world is a little less blurry. She remembers the shape of a man appearing in front of her. He was invisible. He cast a spell. I'm being held by a spell.

Look folks, I can't post a teaser containing Percy and Vex right now, those two kids are in a very nsfw place. 🌶️🌶️🌶️

The workshop clock chimes softly, and the air around the table thickens at the reminder that time is quickly slipping away from them. We didn't leave enough time for the important part. Vex glances at Perran: he's staring down at his hands, picking and scratching distractedly at his finger, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. There's so little time before they have to choose to try the plan they have or let the blocks they've been carefully stacking today fall to nothing. Privacy is something they just don't have the luxury for anymore. Vex turns back to Percy, searching his face. "I know you wanted to deal with logistics first, Percy, but… we don't have to do this. Certainly not tonight, if not at all. We can find another way." "I know. But I also know sometimes the only way out is through." Percy's brow creases again, and he sets the locket down next to the Obedience Ring on the table and stares hard at them both, chewing through his thoughts. It's impossible to follow him when he goes this deep: she has to wait for him to surface and show her what he's found when he's found it. The tick of the clock is as loud as it is distant. But all Vex can do right now is wait. When Percy is ready -- when he thinks he knows -- he turns back to face her. He looks steadier somehow, like he's found something to grab hold of in there that bolsters his resilience. "Vex, for good or ill, for whatever it says about me, I think my willingness may be inextricably tied up in whether or not I believe it can work. If I think it can work, then I want to try." "Do you?" Perran's voice is a jarring intrusion breaking across the table. His tone is purposeful, almost brazen, and his eyes are sharp and probe Percy intently, trying to pry him farther open. "Do you believe it will work?" Vex expects Percy to bristle, for his defences to rise again. But instead Percy tips his chin up under Perran's scrutiny and appears to genuinely consider Perran's question. "That depends," Percy says. "You say it's viable, but also that your toys are insufficient tools to get the job done. You've offered no alternative, but the implication remains that one exists." "One does," Perran says. He leans forward on his elbows, lacing agitated fingers together in front of him as if trying to keep them from twitching. "You're not going to like it." Percy doesn't blink. "I'm not asking how to make it likeable, I'm asking how to make it work."

The key is brightly magical, brighter even than the mansion they're standing in, and Percy has to modulate the evocation of his detection spell down a bit more to look at it comfortably. Both the blade and the locket-like head are made from solid silver and emanate abjuration signatures that are stunningly pure and intriguingly complex. By contrast, the pattern-welded stem and bow of the key are a swirl of opposition: bright pink enchantment, brilliant white abjuration, and sulphurous green necromancy, threaded with barely-there veins of eggshell blue divination that can't possibly be enough to bind it all. The aether vibrates as a wave of antipathy twists through it, making the key's aura almost dance, and when Percy looks for them he sees the tacks everywhere: little pinpricks of aether along the edges, bonding the spells together through the welded metal. "The key's spells can't coexist in a single metal, they'd tear it apart trying to push off each other. But if you pair your metals and spells carefully, you can fold them together and stretch the metal thin, allowing the latent aether bonds to hold it all in place. That's why the key has to be pattern welded, you can't make it any other way." It's beautiful, a strange harmony sown from discord, and for a moment Percy just watches it shimmer. The key's head is particularly captivating: the iridescent circular bow of the pattern-welded key oscillates through a powerful abjurative enclosure, a cage of delicate silver filigree Percy previously assumed was a mere finishing detail. But it's not finished, Percy reminds himself as he stares at the carefully formed hollow, remembering the sapphire. He'd almost forgotten it, almost forgotten how panic-stricken Perran looked the moment he was asked about it, how immediate and vehement Perran's denial was. A shard of uneasy suspicion cracks ice cold down the back of Percy's neck: he and Vex have tied themselves to the making of Perran's keys and to whatever secrets Perran is holding about their missing pieces. Time to find out what you're hiding. And who you're hiding it from. On impulse Percy twists right, whispering in Abyssal, and watches the stream of violet illusion aether flung from his fingertips coalesce in the key's hollow, taking on the shape of the missing sapphire that should sit in the centre of it. Perran makes a startled, panicked sound and his hands draw back, dropping the key's box like it's burned him. Percy's reflexes don't fail: he catches it before it's had time to travel more than a few inches, so smoothly and cleanly the key barely jostles in its nest of velvet. When Percy looks up Perran is breathing sharp and shallow, staring wide-eyed and spooked at Percy's illusion.

The duty of guards bicker about rules and courtesy. Wysaris loses, and demands another round in a way that reeks of bullying entitlement. Wysaris is a universally acknowledged prick, but Aemoira and Keyna are bitches who like nothing more than to get a rise out of someone who can't keep their temper. It will be the same again: Wysaris will cheat the draw of straws so he can go first and win two corners, and Aemoira and Keyna will entertain themselves by pretending for as long as they can there is no alliance between them. Fenlara doesn't begrudge them their petty entertainment any more than she sympathises with their plight. None of them want to be here. The micromanagement of Fenlara's existence makes prisoners of them all, from the guard in her Company to the company's Master and up the ranks all the way to perhaps even the Verdant Lord himself. Who knows how many people are under Cormyn Morvaris' thumb. Wysaris should thank Fenlara, really, for the single-minded dedication it's taking to steal the Watch Cryer's Cloak from him. He'll pay hell and then some for losing it, and Lafiel too for assigning it to someone who misplaced it, but if — when — Fenlara's escape is successful they'll all be set free. It has to be when now, not if. This is her last chance. Promotions are announced just before the turn of the month, less than a week away. Fenlara has seen her name added to the bottom of the Vice Protector's list, watched from animal eyes through a different window as he signed and authorised the orders. This prison is nothing compared to the one her father is building for her in Kraghammer. Eight hours, the baroness said. Promised. Two and a half hours have passed. Fenlara must be out of this room and away from the Keep before dusk. She's working on that.