Luthiel woke early that morning.
Thick blond bangs covered most of her face while soft blue streaks ran through her hair. She lay still for a moment, staring at the ceiling of her room through the curtain of her own hair. Her expression remained calm and unreadable as she sat upright in bed.
Today was the day. Today she was finally going to sit down with Grub and get some answers. Far too many things about the strange Sky-Fallen bothered her.
Alright, thought the voice in control as her calm voice echoed through their shared thoughts. We have to be prepared for today. A lot could happen. Make sure everything goes properly.
The joyful voice chimed in warmly. Got it!
The angry one huffed. Yeah, yeah. Let's just get it over with.
After dressing herself and helping around the house for a short while, she found Morrigan lazily drinking from a wooden bowl near the kitchen.
The elderly turtle woman looked half asleep. Luthiel gave a polite bow.
"I am heading out, Master."
Morrigan barely glanced up.
"Mm."
She took another sip before adding, "have fun interrogating your boyfriend."
Luthiel froze.
"...he is not my boyfriend."
Morrigan immediately burst out laughing. Luthiel turned around and left before the conversation could continue. Behind her she could still hear the old woman cackling.
Luthiel stepped outside and began walking.
She already knew where she would take Grub for their talk. She had picked out several spots around the village that would give them privacy. It was going to be a nice day, despite the subject matter she intended to bring up. The weather was warm and the streets were still mostly empty in the early morning light.
She walked slowly toward the inn. The angry voice grumbled as they went.
We really should've told that Bug to get a job and pay for the inn himself. We're spending our allowance on him and he can't even be honest with us.
The monotone voice said nothing. She simply kept walking. When she reached the inn, she greeted the keeper with a polite bow. The man let her through without hesitation. She was the one paying for the room, after all.
She climbed the stairs and stopped in front of Grub's door. She knocked as loudly as she could but garnered no response.
She knocked again. Still nothing. Trying a third time she only heard a dead silence. Luthiel sighed, pulled out the spare key the keeper had given her, and opened the door.
What she found was Grub sprawled across his bed, dead asleep.
His white coat was still on. His shirt was rumpled, his pants creased. His dark hair was a mess across the pillow, the green streaked through it catching the morning light as one arm hung off the edge of the mattress. He looked like he had collapsed onto the bed mid-thought and simply stopped functioning.
On his desk sat both notebooks—the old pressed-leaf one and the new enchanted one she had given him. Writing utensils were scattered beside them. Charcoal smudges marked the wood where his hand had rested. And in the corner, stuffed carelessly behind a stack of papers, was something else.
A Jangushut crystal. Or what was left of one. The gem had been shattered, its fragments dull and spent, surrounded by a tangle of cables and small metal components that looked like they had been assembled into some kind of crude device. Luthiel stared at it.
What is that? What does he need a Jangushut for?
She started to reach for it, then stopped herself. Her hand pulled back sharply. No.
A Jangushut destabilized Anima. For someone like her, touching one could be extremely dangerous. She didn't know exactly what would happen, but she knew enough to keep her distance.
Instead she studied the arrangement from where she stood. Cables, metal pieces, and a shattered gem. It looked like it had been built, used, and discarded. Whatever Grub had done with it, he had already done it.
Inside her head, the joyful voice spoke up nervously. Are we seriously searching Mister Grub's room while he's sleeping right there?
The monotone voice replied calmly. Of course. Is this not the correct course of action? Secrets could be found here.
The angry one agreed. Yeah, it's fine, you annoying brat. El's in charge right now, so let her work.
The joyful voice grumbled to herself but didn't argue further.
Luthiel moved quietly through the room. On a small shelf near the window, she found something that made her pause.
A stack of books. Three of them. Were these the ones he had checked out at the library?
She pulled them down carefully and studied the covers. Her eyes moved across the titles one by one.
They all had something in common. Every single one was about the nature of mgbaaka maara.
Her voices erupted.
The monotone one thought carefully. It seems Scribe is aware of the mgbaaka maara. I had considered the possibility that he simply didn't know what it was. It appears I was mistaken.
The angry one screamed. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT BUG PLANNING WITH THE MGBAAKA MAARA?
The joyful one thought for a moment. Hey, don't assume the worst. Maybe he just wants it off. We know how dangerous those things can be. What if he has no choice in it? What if they're using it to control him?
LU, LIKE I SAID, YOU'RE STILL A FUCKING SUCK-UP. ALL THE LACERT BASTARDS HAD ONE. IT'S STANDARD ISSUE TO MAKE SURE NO ONE CHICKENS OUT. DON'T GIVE HIM THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT.
The monotone voice continued studying. It could be either. But Thi is correct that all of the Lacert soldiers wore them. However, we now know that Scribe is aware of its existence and has been actively researching how it works. That is significant.
A sound came from the bed. Grub shifted in his sleep, his arm moving, his body turning slightly. Luthiel flinched. She quickly slid the books back onto the shelf in the same order she had found them and stepped away from the desk. She moved silently to the side of his bed and stood there, looking down at him.
Grub slept like someone who had forgotten he had a body. His limbs were sprawled wide, his coat bunched awkwardly around his shoulders, his face half-buried in the thin pillow. His breathing was slow and even.
The joyful voice spoke up. Hey, why are we watching Mister Grub sleep?
The angry one snapped. FOR RESEARCH, DUH. You moron
The monotone voice said nothing. She simply watched. His coat had shifted during the night, the left sleeve riding up past his forearm. There, just visible beneath the rumpled fabric, was the edge of a burn. Red and raw, partially covered by a bandage that had come loose in his sleep. Luthiel's eyes narrowed behind her bangs.
What is that?
She almost reached out to check. Her mitten-like hand hovered inches from his arm before she stopped herself. Touching him would wake him. Instead her gaze drifted lower. His shirt had ridden up slightly, exposing a thin strip of his stomach. And there, just above his hip, was a small, pale scar.
Recognizing it, Luthiel let out a small gasp. It was one of the wounds she had healed for him. Back when she had sat beside his bed in silence and pressed her palms against his broken body until the glow faded and the pain eased.
She wondered where he had gotten it. Who had hurt him. What he had been through before arriving at this village covered in injuries and secrets.
Luthiel turned away from the bed and searched the rest of the room. She found random wrappers from restaurants they had visited together, crumpled in a small pile near the window. Mixed in with them was a collection of scraps—papers, labels, packaging—all with writing on them. She picked one up and studied it.
They were practice materials. Words from the local language, copied out in Grub's handwriting. Some were spelled wrong. Others were scratched out and rewritten. A few even had small drawings beside them as if he was trying to memorize the meaning through association. He had been trying to learn the language without the translation pin.
Luthiel stared at the scraps for a long moment. Then she set them down and walked over to the desk where his notebooks sat and opened the enchanted one.
The pages were dense. Every one was filled with Grub's small, tight handwriting. Diagrams, labels, observations, notes crammed into every available space. She sat down in the chair beside the desk and began reading from the beginning.
What she found pulled her in immediately.
Notes about a camp. A group of people like him. They had fallen from the sky together. There were names she didn't recognize. Descriptions of a coastline. A makeshift settlement. Luthiel was lucky that she had Morrigan make her the same pin as Grub so that she could understand his writing when they hung out. After all, the pin translates languages for you not your language to others.
There are more of them? her selves debated among themselves, voices overlapping in rapid bursts before settling. As she continued reading she found something interesting.
A creature Grub had named the Leviathan. A massive serpent that had attacked them from the sea. His notes described it in clinical detail. Its size, speed, behavior, the way it moved through water, the sound it made. He wrote about broken ribs. About people dying and about how he was barely surviving.
Luthiel's eyes widened behind her bangs.
The Leviathan…
She knew what lived in the deep waters far from here. The villagers called them the waters of Jormungandr. Nothing that entered those waters came back. Was that what he was talking about? Had he actually encountered Jormungandr and survived? She looked back at the scar on his stomach. The broken ribs she had healed. They were from that?
How is he alive?
She kept reading. A name appeared over and over throughout the notes. Wrighty. Someone Grub had clearly spent a lot of time with. The way he wrote about this person was different from the clinical observations that filled the rest of the notebook. There was something warmer there, buried beneath the dry descriptions. Something close to fondness. Was he friend or family? She couldn't tell.
The notes were fascinating. Every page revealed another layer of a world Grub had experienced before arriving at their village. Creatures she had never seen. Places she had never heard of. Survival strategies written in the margins like afterthoughts. He had been through far more than she expected.
She kept reading. Page after page, pulled deeper into Grub's mind than she had ever been. She was so focused that she didn't hear him move. Or hear the sheets shift. She hadn't even noticed the silence behind her change.
"WHAT THE HELL?"
Luthiel's entire body went rigid. She turned around slowly.
Grub was sitting upright in bed, fully awake, his blackish-green eyes wide open and his messy black-green hair hanging across his face. His expression was caught somewhere between shock and fury. He was staring directly at her. At the notebook open in her hands. At the pages filled with every secret he had been keeping since the day he fell from the sky.
Luthiel stared back. Her bangs hid her eyes. Her expression remained blank.
Neither of them moved.