The Fourth Gate: Chapter Twelve

Even with all the plans laid out, and a laundry list of things that I needed to do, I still had to take my best shot at fulfilling another promise: the earring. Ikki had told me my best chance to encounter Kiran, the mysterious blood and abnegation mage, was after the top sixteen, when we got our apartments. So while Kene and Meadow left to visit an alchemy shop with most of the remaining silver in my bank account, and Dusk and Kene’s grandmother got started on building a bathtub, I started to make my way through the city, making a quick stop to purchase an information packet on the top sixteen as I went. It was a basic one, more or less a compilation of publicly available information, and it barely cost me anything. 

I started to skim through the booklet as I walked. Like Ikki had said, Kiran wasn’t registered with any last name, and didn’t belong to any country. Even getting into Greater Daocheng would have been a pain for someone with so little identification, and I expected that the only reason he’d managed it was his tournament orb. He’d fought for his place in the top sixteen against the sponsored fighter from the Redsummer Isles, and had won… not handily, exactly, nobody in the top thirty-two had been weak, but he’d handled her without too much concern. 

The name magic was interesting, since it seemed like whenever he spoke an opponent’s name aloud, he was able to gain a variety of benefits. He’d ignored the Redsummer woman’s invisibility with seemingly no issues, then used a variety of vampire spells to slowly tear her apart, using his Abnegation Magic to counter her offensive spells. 

His blood magic seemed to be fairly standard, using a mix of spells from different types of vampires. That was common enough – an Ib and Ba might have slightly different mana compositions and have very different aspects, but they were still fundamentally similar enough for a lot of cross-spell use. Like how a deciduous forest and a taiga estragon could likely use most of one another’s spells, even if it wasn’t quite as natural. Given the whole thing around names, the booklet speculated he was a Ren dhampir – someone who had a vampire and a human for a parents. Much like half-beasts, they tended to gain a mixture of abilities from both their parents. 

It seemed like in Kiran’s case, it resulted in access to a very general blood magic mana type, and a form of access to Ren’s innate names. The pamphlet wasn’t an information book on vampires, but I put together that it was somewhat comparable to gaining a Nascent Truth of that person, at least for a brief time. I suspected, though couldn’t prove, that Ren vampirism was actually draining their target’s Intent, and using the stolen Intent for their spells. In the same way that Arcanist’s intent could amplify their application of resonance, making their spells stronger, expanding their mana senses, and more, the Ren were using a person’s intent to make the Vampiric spells target that person better. 

It was just a theory, though, especially since that shouldn’t be a normal application of the blend of lunar, life, death, and other smaller aspects of solar, telluric, tempest, and more that made up blood mana. It could just be their legacy, but I was hesitant to apply that logic, because it became self-defeating. Anything could be caused by a legacy, and to ascribe anything that didn’t fit in a puzzle to the effect of a legacy could and would slow actual discovery. 

The second chunk of the booklet was dedicated to Kiran’s abnegation mana, and that was fascinating in its own way. There was no listed specialty for him. He’d shut off the flight spell Kamal had been using to supplement his wings, as well as Kamal’s armor, and had used several counterspells in the fight, but most people agreed that everything he’d done thus far could be chalked up to two core spells – one that created an instant block in the flow of mana, and one that negated an active spell. Maintaining them on Kamal’s absurd mana reserves was impressive, and perhaps indicated that he had a lot of meta spells dedicated to blocking as many specific effects as possible, but it was far from a sure thing. 

I was personally betting on Kiran’s speciality not being anything like that. I’d gotten a good feel for him during Kamal’s giant explosion, and he hadn’t been countering the mana in the air around him. He’d been building and shifting layers of protective magic, which to me suggested he was either a shielding or warding specialist, just one who also had a few more general skills. 

That was all but proven right when I got to the apartments. Not at first, of course. The sect owned apartments were in a nice part of town, and far fancier than anything I was used to living in. The building was tall, at least thirty stories, with smooth glass doors that had inlaid enchantments for privacy and defense, as well as bellhops that stood at the door, almost like a hotel. At least, they were dressed like bellhops. The third gate mana they radiated had an aquatic feel to it, and I was willing to bet that this was essentially light guard duty for outer sect disciples. 

They moved to stop me, but retreated when I pulled out the key from Dusk. One immediately bowed and apologized for his rudeness, before asking if I needed assistance.

“Yeah, actually. Do you know what floor the apartments are on?” 

“The second to top floor, sir,” the bellhop-guard-doorman-person said. “We would only wish to give the best to our guests, but the top floor was reserved for visiting dignitaries and the winners of the Arcanist tournament.” 

I thanked him, then handed over a couple of the small coins they used here, unsure if I was supposed to tip him or not. I headed in, looking over the lobby. It was all glass, steel, marble, and silver, with expensive and uncomfortable looking chairs, a communication mirror taller than my entire body against one wall, and a massive fountain in the center spraying water. I took the gravity enchanted lift up to the twenty-ninth floor, before stepping out and following the plaques on the wall. Even the plaques were nice, the faint telluric energy radiating from them suggesting that the embossing was done with real silver that had a mana current running through it. 

I glanced at the number on my room key, and immediately felt a bit dumb. My key had twenty-nine-oh-five on it. The floor, then the apartment number. Of course. Fifth apartment, twenty-ninth floor. Oh well. 

I walked through the cool halls, across plush carpets, and gently spread out my mana senses. I didn’t want to intrude on people’s private lives, but I also kind of needed to find this artifact, or else be in violation of my deal with an entire clan of vampires, which would be… less than ideal. For all I’d been able to threaten Prince Dhruv with using the Ascending Death Crystal, I would really rather not die. 

Most of the rooms had simple privacy wards on them, designed more to give the illusion of privacy than to keep out a dedicated snooper. Bypassing them was trickier than I’d expected, as the natural weak points in the wards had all been set up to sound alarms if forced through, so instead I headed to the fourth-weakest point, and gently started to seep my senses through to the other side. It was a bit slow, but once I had the trick down, I was able to do it much quicker with the next few rooms. 

Which was when I found a room that I couldn’t push through. These wards traded away subtlety for power, and would have stuck out even if I hadn’t been looking for them. If most of the apartments had silk curtains designed to blend into the background and prevent people from seeing in, then this apartment, number twenty-nine-oh-eight, had built a castle wall around it. Arcanist level wards had been blazed across the entire apartment, thrumming and pulsing… and I knew that I had my man. 

I walked up to the door and knocked. I’d agreed to get the artifact for the Sekhem Court, and they wanted me to steal it, but I didn’t really tend to work that way. Ideally, Kiran would just open the door, I could explain that the earring belonged to the court, probably pay him something to account for the loss, and then be on my merry way. 

It took a few more insistent knocks, but eventually, Kiran opened the door, looking at me eye to eye. That was nice – most people were so much taller than me that I instinctively looked up, but Kirin was actually my height, maybe even a bit shorter. His eyes had a faint redness to them that belied his dhampir nature, and his hair was pure white, similar to Riley’s own, standing out against his medium-brown skin. I wondered about the hair for a second, since Dhruv had black hair, before my eyes caught on something. 

The earring. It looked like it held a large ruby, perhaps the size of my thumbnail, and hung from a golden chain pierced into Kiran’s ear. Just like Dhruv had said, the veiling enchantment on it was something truly spectacular. Even I couldn’t tell that it was anything other than ordinary gold and ruby. 

Kiran noticed my gaze fall upon his earring, and his face immediately hardened. 

“What do you want?” he said, his voice flat and empty. “If you’re one of the people who’s come calling for Satya, she’s dead. And I have no in–”  

“Who’s Satya?” I asked. Kiran stared at me, then raised his hand. 

“What’s your name?” he asked, and I crossed my arms, giving him a blase stare. I wasn’t about to fall for such an obvious trap. 

“Okay, Fox,” he said, and there was a slight… pull… on my spirit. It wasn’t much, but it was there. “I’m going to cast a spell on you. It’s a simple truth telling spell.” 

“You’re not a mind mage,” I said, shaking my head. “What are you doing?” 

“True,” Kiran said, his face still as flat as his voice. “But I am going to cast a spell to analyze the structures of your body and their shifting. The beating of your heart. The sweat on your skin. The breath in your lungs. It might not be perfect, but even with the fragment of a Name, I doubt you can lie to me. Can you, Fox?”  

“You know, there is a reason that’s inadmissible in a court of law, at least in Mossford,” I said. “It’s way too easy to get both false positives and false negatives. I’d be ha–” 

Kiran reached for the door and I held up my hands. 

“Primes, I don’t know who Satya is! If you’d have let me finish, I’d have told you that I was happy to take a truth potion. Those can still be evaded, because they work on a person’s concept of the truth, but they’re better than your body-language-o-matic spell.” 

Kiran’s head tilted to the side, and his earring made a soft tinkling as the golden chain shifted. He seemed to be studying me, calculating, weighing my truthfulness. 

“Tell you what,” I said. “I promise that I’ll do the best I can keep whatever secret it is you’re worried about, and in exchange, I’ll tell you one of mine.” 

Kiran let out a rattling sigh, then opened the door and waved me inside. 

“Alright, you had better come inside.”