Cerberus Rex, Nameless

Part 7| Into The Hatch, 21

Silas raced after his golden beads through the city streets. Though tempted to look in all directions for his missing allies, he honed on the swirling lights dodging the crowd's current. The noise of their foot stomps muddled save for Mr. Noarwin's pounding at Silas's heels. They rung clear—an assurance that someone else searched and cared for the same friends Silas did.

People sped in all directions except the way Silas's golden beads led him. The ground had stopped trembling. The sound of chaos lulled into waves of shock and murmurs. The closer they drew to the epicenter the less chaotic their path. They didn't breach the ring that encircled the center of destruction, though Silas glanced inside it. The west plaza was empty of people but littered with boulders and rubble, a handful of corpses beneath them. The light didn't lead Silas there and relief quaked through his limbs. He stopped when the beads turned direction. He let an elderly man shuffle past then launched into the alley his lights swirled into. They dispersed around a shape he couldn't make out immediately, but his eyes adjusted to the warped shadows, and he cried out a strangled sound that formed a name, "Feri!"

She, as a gnome, and Asinis in disguise, appeared as the shadows from the muted alley dropped off them. They looked at Silas in surprise, and he scooped Feri into his arms. His brow trembled as he fell to his knees. She gasped and clung to him, perhaps out of fear of being dropped, but he would not let harm come to the one who named him.

"You were in danger!" he cried. His heart had never raced so fast as when he and Mr. Noarwin felt the earth tremor and did not know where Feri and Asinis were.

"Silas..." She returned his embrace, her fingers bunching his shirt. He sensed the stress and terror of that reality release from her. She gave herself over to his protection. It comforted him because it meant she was alive instead of a fragmented spirit like his father. And—it was nice to be relied on. That he could make her feel safe when she'd done that so often for him.

"What happened?" Mr. Noarwin asked as he stood over them.

"I don't know. One of Sajna's towers started falling apart," Asinis said, a hand clutched over his chest as he struggled to catch his breath.

"I can't believe you held it for so long!" Feri turned out of Silas's arms to face Asinis. "Where have you been hiding that power?" she asked.

Silas tilted his head, half disappointed to let Feri go and half curious that she didn't know about Asinis's abilities. Silas wondered what her and Mr. Noarwin's impressions were of Asinis. He'd always sensed a current of monstrous power within him. Whether Asinis downplayed it out of modesty or he was unaware, Silas couldn't determine. He did not have the talent of reading people like Mr. Noarwin seemed to.

"I didn't mean to," Asinis mumbled. "It just never came up. Besides. It wasn't that powerful. I barely held it for the five seconds I did."

"You kept part of a building suspended for a whole five seconds?" Mr. Noarwin asked.

Silas wondered why he appeared a little angry. Perhaps he was having to reassess his first impression of the wizard. Silas looked at Asinis, who avoided eye contact with them. It made Silas frown. He sensed severe magical fatigue in Asinis's body, and he wasn't collecting the necessary energy to recover sufficiently. Silas stood from where he knelt beside Feri and approached him. Asinis glanced up when Silas rested a hand Asinis's arm, and then they watched as a scarlet glow flowed out of Silas's hand and into Asinis. Asinis's eyes fell shut, and he sighed in relief.

"What did you do?" Feri asked.

"I restored some of his mana," Silas said, "by... channeling it from the surrounding ether. It will help him recover." Fatigue pinpricked through Silas's body, but he shrugged it off. He'd heard of lies and knew people employed them, but he hadn't lied. He had used the surrounding ether. It was just... normal mana didn't support his means of healing and restoration. The source, though near, came from... somewhere more specific.