Hot. Too hot. Khazmine thought as she tugged desperately at the too-tight black cravat that was choking her. The dizzy sergeant's uninjured arm propped up the outcast and prevented her from face-planting into the pavers, but it still shook faintly and threatened to buckle. The long, silver hair from her wig enveloped Khazmine in a humid shroud, increasing the effects of trapped heat on her reddening, sweat-drenched face. “T-the hospital, lad… Wh-which way—?”

“What's wrong, miss?” the skinny fetch-and-carry asked as he pressed a bloodied hand into the sergeant’s collar to steady her. “Did that man hurt you? Are you sick?”

“D-doan know…” Khazmine replied in a weak, trembling stupor. She struggled to stay awake through force of will, but the outcast’s tenacity was running low. The young servant wiped the sergeant’s damp forehead with his tunic sleeve, only to find it soaking wet as Khazmine continued. “doan know was w-wrong…”

“Neither do I, miss,” the servant mumbled as he attempted to help the Solanai to her feet. As soon as the sergeant managed to stand upright, the lanky fetch-and-carry reached into the crate to recover a pair of sea-green bottles. Each one was freshly decorated with handprints from the child’s bloodied palms. “You’ll never make it up the hill to the hospital, ma’am. And I can’t leave these vials here to escort you there, so…”

A concert of tinkling glass sounds echoed as Khazmine’s world spun around her. The outcast swore she felt a strange sensation on her person but couldn’t place the feeling of having her pockets weighed down by heavy glass vials filled with sloshing liquids.

“Gah, the master’s not gonna be happy when he sees this,” the fetch-and-carry mumbled to himself as he stuffed Khazmine’s pockets with the remains of his haul. “Come on, miss. Lean on me if you would. That’s it, this way… Master will know what to do…”

A puddle of strange liquid vanished into the cracks between the herringbone pavers where the young fetch-and-carry had abandoned the shimmering shards of his broken bottles. The street cleaners would be around before too long to erase all evidence that there had been a scuffle here, and the lanky servant squinted at having to leave so much of his treasure behind.

Staggering, bewildered, and unaware of the passage of time, Sergeant Khazmine moseyed east through the backstreets, propped up by the fetch-and-carry’s spindly body. The outcast failed to notice the ache from her limping leg, or the searing pain in her arm from Mister Hallem's sword strike from yesterday. Instead, the utmost concentration was required to put one foot in front of the other in time with her encouraging companion’s steps.

“We’re almost there, ma’am,” the servant coaxed another tentative step from the outcast as he fiddled with a knot from a black cloth tied around his hand. The fine linen cravat Khazmine had tugged off now served as a makeshift bandage wrapped around the more damaged of the servant’s palms. He clenched the modest wrapping and wondered if the exhausted soldier remembered feebly dressing his wound in her addled state. “Just a little further…”

The shambling pair approached a narrow, three-story building whose architecture and materials were unfamiliar to the outcast. Khazmine squinted up at the uncanny structure with its smooth, sleek wooden walls and contrasting dark cedar shake roof. The sergeant tried to discern what was so foreign about its design as she slinked forward and noted that it was decidedly modern and different from its marble neighbors across the way.

She was too weak to care that this servant boy had taken Khazmine to some strange nobleman’s modest “second residence.” If the outcast had more awareness, she might have had the sense to fear the untold strangeness of one of Holloworth’s most notorious citizens. Alas, Khazmine remained ignorant of any dangers and desperately sought refuge from pain and sorrow.

“Here we are, ma’am,” the young servant announced as he unlocked the heavy front door for her. It swung on silent brass hinges and opened up on a surprising array of dazzling, scientific wonderments filling the expanse from floor to ceiling. Devices of unknown origin, crystal contraptions, and metallic marvels swiveled and danced at timely intervals, each performing their respective functions autonomously with well-timed choreography. “Welcome to Banebury Hall.”

---

Haaa… Eaaase…

A whispering choir of murky, distorted voices called out in her mind as Khazmine fought for consciousness. Each utterance sounded like a prolonged exhale of lingering breath in the distance, but it was too loud to sound so far away. A flurry of foreign, indecipherable languages echoed in the frigid fog, muddling it with hushed, eerie babble. After an eternity shrouded in the discordant choir, the outcast could only parse two words from her native tongue.

Help… Please…

Khazmine’s eyes opened with a start and her lungs filled with a sharp gasp of air as she jolted to wakefulness. The sergeant propped herself up in a sleek leather chair that creaked under the outcast’s shifting weight. Subtle metallic clinks from the gallery of instruments around the room carried on their gentle music, competing with the voices that still faintly rung in the outcast’s aching head.

Still-gloved hands rubbed her weary eyes and Khazmine lately realized that she had a strange tube filled with electric-blue liquid sticking out of the crook in her left elbow. The device was similar to Rida’s back at his healer’s hovel, but this contraption was far more sophisticated than the southerner’s apparatus and was constructed out of more expensive materials to boot. Its tendril embedded itself deep into her forearm as well, much to the outcast’s growing concern.

A gentle tug on the tube sent a shock of pain through Khazmine’s arm, and she ceased trying to remove it without aid. Instead, the outcast traced the long, winding path of clear tubing back to its source, which included a glass globe hanging from a metal pole with a strange chunk of bluish-black crystal suspended in the vessel’s center. The outcast’s eyes narrowed as she tried to identify the unfamiliar stone with its many cruel, angry points. It had a mysterious luster that reflected light and images in its many facets, much to Khazmine’s piqued curiosity.

The outcast’s ears pricked up as Khazmine silently leaned forward to get a closer look. Her choir of distant voices grew louder the longer she stared at the bizarre crystal, and the half-breed was almost certain that the warped rumblings were coming from the craggy stone itself. Swaths of goosebumps rose on her arms and legs as Khazmine flushed anew with fear. She knew of no magic or science that could conjure such foreign entities, and the mere thought of it woke some sleeping terror buried deep in Khazmine’s bones.

Some distant clink of hard wood on the smooth floor drew the outcast’s interest, and her head swiveled to listen for the rhythmic clack-clack-clacking that came at regular intervals. It was a strain to tilt her body to face the correct direction without jostling the attached tube, and Khazmine exhaled a sigh of relief when an ancient, doddering figure traipsed through the open door to the chamber and stepped into view around the plush leather chair she was sitting in.

The decrepit human stood tall and thin, much like his odd, modern dwelling, though Khazmine imagined that he might have been even taller in younger days, when gravity was kinder to humans’ bodies. He strode slowly and with a limp, aided by a magnificent wooden cane of unbelievably intricate hand-carved design that even featured a king’s ransom of inlaid stones cut into rounded cabochons. No matter where she looked, Khazmine found herself fascinated by the rich details of this old man’s adornments, from his long, beaded platinum braid to the elegant bronze filigree stitched in his mahogany robe. The outcast unconsciously backed into her leather chair at the stranger’s uncomfortable proximity, as the old man bent low to reach for the clear, flexible tube on her arm.

“Remain still, please,” the old man stated firmly. His voice had a cold, metallic quality that was contradictory to his soft, aged appearance. If Khazmine had to guess what this old man would have sounded like, she would never have placed him as having a low, steely tone to his speech. “You will become injured if the device is detached incorrectly.”

“Device?” Khazmine asked as the tube separated from her skin without leaving even a drop of blood, much to her surprise.

“You’ve undergone a significant ether drain, which required medical intervention.” The old man coiled the length of tubing as Khazmine’s eyes darted back to the suspended crystal in its glass vessel. “I have provided a…nutrient infusion…to allow you to absorb ambient magic. Do you feel any lingering discomfort?”

“Wh-what? No, not really. Just a headache.” Khazmine winced as the vibration from her own voice sent another spike of pain through her temples. The slurry of foreign words dimmed as the outcast fought off a nasty pinging in her head, much to the old man’s interest. Piercing grey eyes bore into Khazmine and she braced herself for whatever the old man was itching to ask her.

“Can you hear—” the old man started to ask before stopping mid-sentence and shaking his head. “Forgive me, I have forgotten my manners... My name is Rowyn Banebury, Marquis of Banebury Ridge. And you are?”

“Khazmine, of the Solanai of Old Sarzonn,” the outcast replied reflexively.

“I thought as much,” Rowyn confessed as he scanned the outcast with an unblinking stare. “You bear the rank of sergeant, though I highly doubt that you are one.”

Gloved hands instinctively reached up confirm that her wig was still in place, but Khazmine discovered that it had been removed, likely during the course of her treatment. Marquis Banebury knew she was an outcast by her Outsider features and black hair, yet still deigned to treat Khazmine in her diminished state. The outcast considered deceiving this learned man of science but knew better than to double-down on a bad lie.

“No, I’m not,” Khazmine admitted. “I’m a fetch-and-carry from Cheapside, and I’ve come with permission from my employer to seek medical assistance from the healers of Holloworth.”

“You are not gravely injured, despite casting from flesh,” Rowyn observed with a matter-of-fact tone.

Casting from flesh.

The outcast had heard of the process, though she was unaware of how to perform such a feat intentionally. Under the right circumstances, any ether user could sacrifice their life energy or vitality to harness ambient magic. The cost of doing so was usually too high to bear, so it ever hadn’t occurred to Khazmine to try.

“What do you need help with?”

A frown crept up on Khazmine as she considered what to reveal to this stranger. Rowyn had the coloring and shape of any old run-of-the-mill local human, but something was different about him. Something…off. Marquis Banebury felt as out-of-place to Khazmine as this building was to the rest of Holloworth—unassuming from the outside, but with the capacity for great wonders hidden within. Was she the first person to think this marquis was strange?

“It isn’t for me. It’s…for my little brother.” Khazmine lowered her head as she spoke, giving in to temptation to share her family’s misfortune. The words somehow hurt to say aloud, and the outcast had to steel her nerves to force each statement out. “He has…his ether core is in pieces, and he won’t last much longer… I’m told that the healers at the Holloworth hospital might be able to help.”

“I see…” Marquis Banebury finished wrapping up his medical apparatus and tugged twice on a long, braided cord suspended from the ceiling. Rowyn hobbled closer and sat comfortably in the twin chair across from Khazmine, with his head tilted to mimic a curious wyrbird’s unnerving gaze. In the brief interval he sat there, staring back at the outcast, Rowyn only blinked once when his young servant entered the chamber, bearing a tray full of sweet thistle-wheat cakes and a single place setting for tea.

“Ah, Ellory. Please set it here, child,” Banebury gestured to the small table between the two chairs. Ellory did as he was told and placed the heavy silver tray in front of Khazmine, once again with his eyes averted.

Wait a minute, what the—? Khazmine’s arm shot forth to grab the boy’s wrist gingerly in her grasp. A gentle tug on his arm drew the lad closer without comment, and the outcast’s jaw gaped open upon seeing the impossible marvel in front of her. Khazmine would have bet every last stag in her coin purse that this poor boy’s hands were in tatters and his knees had scrapes from his fall, and yet…

He doesn’t have a scratch on him…

Feeling his quickened pulse even through her thick gloves, Khazmine released Ellory’s willowy wrist and nearly knocked over her tea setting in shock. The troubled fetch-and-carry shot a glance at his master before receiving an approving nod to excuse himself hastily from the sitting room. Without missing a beat, Rowyn Banebury turned his head with a jarring twitch to face Khazmine and the outcast flinched at his uncanny gray eyes.

“Tell me, Deceiver… How much is a cure worth to you?”