Page 12 of Exquisite Monster
Now I stirred the cauldron in the light of the bottles I’d made, stationed around the small room. They had yet to cure to full brightness.
My right arm ached as the stirring grew harder. But I didn’t stop. Because if I couldn’t handle this, then Gleym was right. I wouldn’t be able to handle whatever the Elders threw at me when I got back to the surface. This pain was nothing.
The liquid, which had been vibrant orange, darkened as it thickened. It turned into a deep, burnt color, and I only stopped stirring when I could barely move my arm to make it through. It shimmered in the light as it was supposed to.
“It’s done,” I said, out of breath and pulling the cauldron away from the flames.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, but the only way is to test it.” I pulled out the metal rod I’d been stirring with and moved away from the table into the open space, keeping the cloth of my clothes well away as I smacked it on the ground.
The force with which the rod ignited nearly threw me backwards. Pale blue flames licked along the surface, hot and fierce. Relief and satisfaction hit me in the chest. I’d done it. It had worked.
Even Gleym, though her face revealed little, seemed pleased. “Well done.”
“Thank you.”
Glancing at my arm, she crossed to the rolls of books and scrolls and selected a heavy book. Yet another thing I doubted had fallen from above. Unless an entire ship of them had somehow made it to the center of the world and fallen down here. But these books didn’t seem like they’d ever touched water.
“Here.” She set it on the table. “Your body will grow stronger, but you need rest. Read this. Begin to learn it. You have a good understanding, but not a great one. If you want to survive, you must know everything you can. The shortcuts and substitutions. How to make things quickly and in the worst of circumstances.”
She turned to leave the room, and I doused the rod in a nearby bucket of water meant for accidents.
“Why this?” I asked before she disappeared into the shadows.
The dragon didn’t need me to explain. Why wasthisthe metric of whether or not I was ready? Whether I could survive? It was something I was interested in and loved, but I didn’t know that brewing potions of fire would help me save my mates.
“You said you know your way around a blade, yes?”
“Well enough.”
“And that is good,” she said. Her voice had turned low and dark as she came toward me. “But you could train every day for a decade, and your strength still might not match that of a hardened male soldier, let alone a dragon. If you want to live in this world, girl, you need weapons that can protect you. And though I’m sure you wish it otherwise, your strength is not one of them.
“But fire that can burn at your fingertips? Mist that can blind and control someone’s mind, even for a moment? That might be thesecond that saves you from death in a world that has already decided to ensure you are returned to the stars as soon as possible.”
I swallowed. Everything she said was true. And though she did not speak it aloud, we both knew that even this kind of knowledge wasn’t a guarantee I would survive. It was a chance, and only that.
“I’ll read it,” I said.
“Do better than read it. Merge it with your mind. Everything you learn here and everything you remember. Until your unconscious self can use the knowledge without thought or hesitation. If you don’t I might as well kill you now.”
Her back was to me when I dared to speak the question that had been screaming in my mind for days. “Who are you?”
Gleym glanced over her shoulder, eyes dropping to the smoke that now rose from the bucket. Something passed over her face that I couldn’t read. Then she locked eyes with me, their color so similar to the fire she’d just had me wield. “I am, or I was, the seventh Elder. Cast out, betrayed, and thrown into a pit purely so I would die.” One small, sad flicker of a smile. “We have much in common, you and I.”
Then she was gone, and what I thought would give me answers only left me with more questions.
CHAPTER SEVEN
________
KATALENA
Varíhopped up onto my shoulder when I woke him from his nap in the bowl, riding with me back to the room that had become our home. I’d rearranged the pillows and fabric into something that more resembled a bed. There were a few chests and chairs in here, storing things like paper and more bolts of cloth, but there was plenty of room, and we didn’t need much.
A few rooms away was a bath. Warm, swirling water in a sunken pool that reminded me ofSkalisméra.
Gleym had given me a few of the shapeless robes I wore, and I slipped out of this one, damp with sweat from the effort I’d used to make the combustible paste.
