“People who tap into Zia's Spring have enhanced senses and can willfully enhance traits about themselves including strength, speed, agility, smell, vision, et cetera. Lay Alban uses this cryfix to smell, Rayton Alban uses it to hear while Eim Alban uses it to feel.”
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Three nights ago, Wuxhia committed a sinful crime but when he woke up, it was as if it didn't even happen. So, Wuxhia went back to his daily duties of avoiding Idris Beckefort and any talk of Bureau. He devoted his time to the two baneas in his custody. Fowella had been wrong about the fiesty girl but he deeply hoped that Feng Lemohn would give in.
Two nights ago, he did it again. It was like slipping into an odd routine and finding a foothold there simply because the only conflict he ever had were all in his head.
'It's Xihan's body, you're Xihan,' a voice would yell.
'It's Wuxhia's body now, you're Wuxhia,' a more sinister one would prod.
One night later, he wonders where Fowella is as he lays naked alone under her bedsheets. He recalls the first moment of his madness. His lips on Fowella's. She saying his name.
Wuxhia?
Xihan?
Wuxhia?
He slips out and goes to don a red bathing robe. He looks at the bedside, having a feeling that he had felt a presence there last night. It could just be paranoia. No one could possibly enter the room and leave while he was still in it. He notices a battered looking cupboard and knows it cannot have come with the palace. Fowella is a vain woman. Can it be that she holds the cupboard dear? Maybe it contains Fowella as a child. He reaches for the carved handle.
"You're awake." Fowella is suddenly by the door. He draws his hand away from the cupboard as if repelled. He has it deep within him the urge not to offend his mother who has continued to look oddly approachable recently. Her eyes can be brighter. Her countenance sweeter. Her smooth skin hidden under layers and layers of cream silk.
"How long have I been asleep?"
"The night and most of the day," Fowella is answering even as Wuxhia peeps through a curtained window to stare at a rain drenched darkening sky.
"I'm losing time," is all he finds himself saying.
"You need to free your mind some more. It's just the thirty sixth day."
"No, it's the end of the thirty sixth day. The other baneas."
"Bad news, Bough tried his best to track them but their trail is lost."
"Oh." Wuxhia might have seen that coming. "And Feng?"
"Still boring and uncooperative but the royal cryfixes being gone is more than enough to turn the tides around. Sometimes, I don't even know why you go through the trouble."
"If I don't have the royal cryfixes, I will never be acknowledged."
"With absolute dominance, who needs aknowledgement? Think carefully, Xihan." Fowella continues after a mild pause, "The Fortunist said your desire is assured and the Fortunist is always right." It is the dreadful amount of wistfulness in her tone that causes Wuxhia to first freeze with a growing sense of alarm.
'Are you the Fortunist?' she had asked him once, 'Then why do you speak poison?'
The Fortunist is always right.
"Of course the Fortunist is always right!" Wuxhia blusters.
"Yes, of course." She is smiling expectantly at him as if she is waiting for him to realise something. She gives a disappointed sigh when nothing is forthcoming.
YOU ARE READING
THE FORTUNIST
Fantasy"You don't find the Fortunist, the Fortunist finds you." Nobody knows how the nine cryfixes- magical accessories- came to be. But the country of Albeny has made their magic its foundation while submitting to the whims of a Fortunist, an alleged sor...
