Unsleeping Patron - Second Pathway: Blood-Wing

The pine shavings under Silas’s bench still smelled of wet resin. Outside the single glassless window, the wind drove thin grey dust against the timber shutters, making the wooden latch rattle in its socket every few seconds.Silas sat with his bare feet resting on the cold slate flags. He looked down at his right hand. Beneath the pale skin, the amber light of Mind-Light pulsed with a heavy, deliberate beat once every two seconds, steady as a brass clock. The necrotic curse was gone, but the golden aura felt stiff, like a layer of dried lac-wax wrapped around his bones that hadn’t yet soaked into the marrow.He squeezed his eyes shut and reached into his head.The cold yellow skin of the Parchment flared in his mind, its edges frayed with dark, writhing thread-marks from his Eldritch Physique.Sequence 8, Silas projected the thought, his mental grip tightening around the obsidian bone quill. Give me the path to Sequence 8.The quill didn’t move. Instead, the yellow hide shuddered violently, a series of jagged, dark-crimson cracks spreading across the leather surface like iron split by frost.Suicide, the Parchment’s response flared in dark, ragged script that smelled faintly of scorched hair. Mind-Light is unripened. The golden seed has not taken root in the spine. Attempting Sequence 8 before the first drink is fully digested will tear the meat from the skeleton and turn the brain to grey soup.Silas’s jaw tightened. He held his breath as the cold pressure inside his skull spiked, making his teeth ache. How long to digest it?Time. Action. Usage. Three years. Five years. Ten.”Ten years,” Silas muttered aloud into the empty room, his eyelids twitching. We don’t have ten years. General Wei’s scouts are standing at the fence line right now.Before he could pull back from the connection, the obsidian quill in his mind twitched. It didn’t wait for his command. Driven by the dark, parasitic hunger of his Eldritch Physique, the bone nib slammed downward, tearing deep grooves into the Parchment’s skin as it forced a line of black-and-crimson text onto the surface.The Parchment was stealing a formula from the void.Eldritch Physique detected. Dual-Core Vessel unlocked.Biotic Pathway (Mind-Light) and Eldritch Pathway (Blood-Wing) do not conflict. Chaos balances Order. You may bear a second Sequence 9 while the first ripens.Formula for Sequence 9: Blood-Wing: Main Component: 1 Blood-Wing Spectre (Roaming Entity). Auxiliary Components: 20 grams of Sken-Demon Core Powder. 50 milliliters of Quicksilver Grass Extract.Target Location: The Parchment’s radar grid exploded into view behind his eyelids, the yellow background shifting to an immense, dark terrain map. A red dot flashed far beyond the Asharto territory, far beyond the Ash Hills, deep in the frozen wastes to the north.Distance: 2,467 kilometers.Silas opened his eyes with a sharp gasp, his chest heaving as if he had just been pulled from deep water. He wiped his nose with his sleeve; a single drop of cold, black blood had leaked from his left nostril, staining the canvas tunic.Two thousand four hundred and sixty-seven kilometers.He stood up, his boots scraping loudly against the slate floor. He walked over to the narrow window and pushed the wooden shutter open an inch.The grey Miasma rolled endlessly beyond Brierhold’s ten-kilometer golden circle. Out there, two thousand miles away in the deep cold, a pair of phantom wings was drifting over the wasteland, draining the blood from whatever lived in the fog.Behind him, the floorboards creaked as Hester pushed open the front door, holding an earthen bowl filled with dark, herbal broth.”Gideon wants to know if you’re coming to the stone-vault tonight,” she said, stopping near the table. She looked at his face, her eyes lingering on the dark smudge beneath his nose. “He’s got the seven candidates gathered. Wu looks like he’s going to throw up.”Silas wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand, smearing the black drop into the pale skin.”Tell him I’ll be there,” Silas said, staring out at the northern horizon. “And tell Gold to start sharpening the iron spades. I’m leaving as soon as the Seven finish their Chrysalises.”