average human’s Reviews > One Small Echo > Status Update

It suits you, Hymn said happily, coiling around her wrist. It felt like his little head was perking up to watch her stir the concoction. I can’t wait to use it on someone.
She halted.
You seem … very excited to … hurt people, she hesitated to say.
Are you not? He seemed confused. I’ll admit, it’s a new sensation. I thought it was coming from you.
That did not seem like a good sign.
Not at all.
But, as with everything else she was currently juggling, there was nothing to be done about it in that moment, so she pushed it to the back of her mind, filing it away into a little box labelled, “So the totally cute and delightful little baby monster living inside my body is beginning to get delightful little baby violent urges.”
She went back to work, Hymn happily observing and commenting on every step.
The sun crept across the glass overhead, light shifting from gold to amber. Shadows lengthened between the benches, making it a little harder to see. Sweat slicked her spine, but she barely noticed, absorbed in the slow, deliberate choreography of her hands.
When she finally sealed the vial, her shoulders ached, and her eyes burned from holding onto the second sight for so long.
She double-checked to make sure she had cleaned her bench thoroughly before she let the second sight fall away. The world softened immediately. Light drained into warmth and sound and scent. The drip of water returned to prominence. She exhaled, leaning her hip lightly against the bench, steady and exhausted in equal measure.
You feel happy, Hymn said. Usually, you have a dozen feelings all happening at once.
Eiko smiled faintly. That was fun. Strangely meditative.
She picked up her cane and stepped out of the greenhouse, tracing her way back to Chasin’s office.
The door opened only a moment after she knocked, but he wasn’t alone in the office. She could hear the shifting of bodies, and the kind of loaded hush that usually followed an abrupt pause in conversation.
“Recruit.” Chasin’s voice scraped across the room to her from his desk, and she heard the other bodies shift just enough to let her through.
She knew the sound of that particular leather rustling. They were Eclipse.
She walked to the desk and held out the vial. Chasin took it from her but caught her hand before she could draw it back. He pressed it, palm facing up, onto the surface of his desk and tapped it, the directive clear: Don’t move.
She waited and heard one of the soldiers murmur, “Poison, then.”
Someone grumbled unhappily, another chuckled, and then there was the clink of coin passing hands. Several minutes of silence followed, but these were Eclipse soldiers. They were comfortable in silence.
Eventually, Chasin’s finger brushed her open palm, signing, Well done. And then, dismissed. Tomorrow.
Well done?
She left the office in a daze.
Well done?
She knew how to handle failure. She knew how to handle having her ass handed to her. She knew how to handle being the odd one out, the “less pretty and less polished” princess and the “unwanted recruit.”
She did not know what to do with well fucking done.

82%

She began to recognise the handwriting in the margins. This tight, careful script always favoured heat. This looser hand insisted on timing. One furious annotator dug into the parchment with progressively darker ink.
Hours slipped past.
Sunlight shifted and dulled as clouds moved overhead. The greenhouse grew heavy and stifling, the air thick with scent and heat. Sweat slicked her spine. Her hands ached. Her eyes burned. A drop of blood fell from her lower lashes, contaminating her final attempt at the poison.
She leaned back against the bench and laughed once, sharp and humourless.
“Light above,” she said, as her vision ultimately failed, plunging into darkness. “You’re such a fucking asshole.”
He’s the worst, Hymn agreed. At least Cairn scaled to your ability. Chasin just went from beginner to advanced in a day.
She cleaned her bench with shaking, furious fingers, wiping away every trace of her failures, but she didn’t close the book. There had been an empty vial beside the book, and it still sat there, just as empty.
She didn’t need to seek out Chasin to know that this would be her task until she finally succeeded at it, so she cleaned all traces of blood from her face and skipped right past his office, meeting up with Rion in the dining hall so that they could walk to Brightfort together.
She was too angry to speak in anything other than grunts and sighs during her evening lesson with the attendant-horde, even during the part of the lesson concerning proper ways of speech. Eventually, they dismissed her early, keeping Rion for further instruction.
The next morning, instead of sensing her wavering emotional fragility, Cairn simply beat her as usual, and when she made her way to the greenhouse, the recipe book was open to the same page, the empty vial still sitting there in silent demand.
Nulla Forma.
She ran her fingers along the battered page and briefly glanced at the small alcohol burner.
Should she …?
But no, she probably shouldn’t. If this was how Chasin reacted to her perfect, model-recruit behaviour, she didn’t want to know how he would react to her burning one of his recipe books.
So she tried again … and she failed again, leaving the greenhouse flush-faced, her hair a frizzy, frazzled dark cloud, her eyes heavy and burning.
The next day, she failed again.
The day after that, she failed again.
Several more failures, and she was beginning to think this was another trick. A lie. The entire potion—the recipe of overlapping notes—was falsified by Chasin just to mess with her. She had become so obsessed with her inability to produce the finished poison that she didn’t even notice the subtle looks from her friends. Not until they cornered her one night before her princess lesson in Brightfort.
They appeared in the courtyard in the way people did when they were trying very hard to act casual about something they were absolutely not casual about. Eiko slowed, intimately familiar with each of their murmuring voices and nervous fidgeting. Her fingers tightened around her cane.
“What’s this?” she demanded, when they fell into sudden silence.
Ky cleared his throat. “We just—um—” His voice wobbled. “We’re worried, Eiko.”
“I’m fine,” she said automatically, without pause.
“Heard that before,” Kaito returned flatly. “You’re doing that thing again.”
Eiko sighed. “What thing?”
“The thing where you decide a healthy body is a bourgeois concept,” Rion supplied, perfectly sweet. “And you start treating it like an inconvenient carriage you’re dragging behind you.”
“What she said,” Ky mumbled.
Eiko decided to keep walking. The bastards decided to keep pace with her, forcing her to stop again.
“I have lessons,” she said. “I have training. I have⁠—”
“You have a power that you’re abusing,” Ren cut in quietly, and the way he said it made her stomach tighten.
Ren only used that tone when he was afraid.
“I’m managing it,” she said, now a little confused. Had it gotten that bad?
Ky made a small sound. “You’re … not, though.”
She angled her face towards the sound of him. “I am,” she doubled down stubbornly.
“No,” Ky insisted, his voice hardening. “Stop it, Eiko. You’re skin and bones again.”
Kaito shifted close, his hand clasping her shoulder. “It’s like when we first came here, and you’d disappear into the library, and we’d find you in the morning with ink on your hands and your hair a mess and your ribs showing. And you always had this feverish flush in your cheeks that made it look like you were sick, but it was just leftover stain from you crying tears of blood.”
Rion’s breath hitched, quiet and sharp. “You can’t do this to us again.”
Eiko stared into the darkness like it might offer her an escape route. “But … how can I follow the recipes if I can’t fucking see?”
“You’ll find another way,” Rion said, and she reached out carefully, catching Eiko’s hand.
Eiko’s jaw clenched. “I need it.”
Ky grumbled, “You don’t need it for as long as you’re using it.”
That’s true, Hymn said quietly.
She didn’t want to admit it, but they were right. Her face heated, and with immense difficulty, she dragged a single word out from deep inside her roiling gut. “Fine.”
Kaito shifted, and she could hear him reach into his pocket. A familiar crinkle. He pressed something into her hand, and she felt around the edges of the waxy paper, uncovering the sandwich within. She began to eat without thinking, but it was impossible not to suddenly recall him doing exactly this, several nights past—cornering her in the courtyard on her way to Brightfort and casually handing her food. And it was always Ky waiting for her when she stumbled home, pressing more food into her hands.
Eiko scowled so that she wouldn’t cry. “You’re all conspiring.”
Ky shifted on his feet. “It’s a friendly conspiracy.”
Ren added, very quietly, “We don’t want to lose you to a book again.”
Eiko went still. Because that was the real problem. It wasn’t that Chasin was forcing her. It was that she had found something that offered her control, and that control was now dangling just out of her reach. It was that, as much as she complained, she thrived under challenge. It was that she would have doggedly chased that impossible recipe into ruin even without Chasin putting it before her. She could feel the obsession uncurling inside her, desperate to gain the upper hand. To achieve something. To master this recipe that danced teasingly out of her reach every day. She had felt the same desperate drive while learning Chasin’s language.
She curled her fingers around the empty food wrappings, wondering where the sandwich had disappeared to.
“Fine,” she grumbled again. The word was a little easier to say the second time. “I’ll—” She hesitated, the words tasting strange. “I’ll limit the sight.”
Ky exhaled, Rion’s grip loosened, relief humming from her throat. Kaito made a satisfied sound and squeezed her shoulder.
“Good,” Ren grunted.
“All right,” she muttered, because she really didn’t want to cry. There was no way of knowing what sort of liquid would leak from her eyes at that point in the night. “Time to go get bullied by attendants now.”

83%

The next day, Eiko lasted approximately ten minutes into her daily Falling Session with Cane Man before the frustration inside her exploded.
“He’s not teaching me anything!” she ranted, dropping her staff and tossing her hands into the air.
“I really hope you’re talking to me and not that other girl’s imaginary friends,” Cairn groused. She could hear his feet shifting in restless preparation—one foot steady, the other heavy, dragging, and stabbing, as it always was. His posture seemed to hint that he was considering whether to keep hitting her even though she had clearly disarmed herself.
“Who, Vana?” She gave him a frown. “How could I be talking to someone else’s imaginary friends?”
He took a moment to answer, during which time she assumed that he was wondering what his options were, and if he chose the “just walk away” option, would she follow him? She would. And if he chose the “beat her even harder than before” option, would she complain even louder? She would. He seemed to realise that, because finally, he sighed and stalked over to the overhang for his canteen.
“Who the fuck are you talking about?” he shot over his shoulder.
“The commander.” She tried to say it confidently. She really did. Instead, it came out as a whisper. Just in case.
She could feel Cairn frowning at her.
She officially knew Cairn too well. She wanted to go back to a time when she didn’t know Cairn at all.
“Have you tried asking for what you need?” His tone was lined in heavy sarcasm.
“What?” she spluttered defensively. “No, he leaves me alone in the greenhouse all afternoon. He isn’t even there.”
“He sits in his fucking office all afternoon. You think he’s doing that for his fucking health? You think he doesn’t have better fucking things to do? He’s commander of the dark-damned Godsguard, blind girl.”
She shut her mouth with a snap.
“Listen.” Cairn sounded like he was scrubbing a weathered hand down his face. “The commander is … complicated. I know it won’t make any sense to you, but if he isn’t breathing down your neck, it’s for a good reason. He’s not just good at what he does—he’s brilliant. I know you don’t understand him. When he’s ready, maybe, one day, he might help you understand. Maybe. But it’s not your job to know what’s going on inside his head. It’s your job to follow his orders and trust him.”
Trust him?
Trust the man who didn’t just lie to her, but lied to her about lying to her, and then lied some more?
Not likely.
Cairn stood, nudging her leg with his cane. “That’s enough gossiping. Pick your damn staff back up.”
Two hours later, she marched herself to Chasin’s office instead of going to the greenhouse, her knuckles knocking angrily against the door.
He rapped distractedly on his desk, bidding her enter.
She didn’t bother closing the door behind her. She didn’t plan to stay long.
“I’m failing,” she announced flatly, striding a few steps into the room with every ounce of boisterous aplomb that she could muster.
The statement was met with silence, and then there was the scrape of parchment and the faintest brush of his glove against the desk as his fingers moved, hinting that he was ignoring her, at least outwardly.
That made something hot and reckless snap inside her chest.
“I don’t mean struggling,” she clarified. “I mean I am actively, repeatedly, and creatively fucking this up. I’ve followed every version of the recipe. I’ve tried every correction written in that cursed book. I’ve burned things, curdled things, separated things, and produced something that hissed at me yesterday. I don’t know what I created, but I think it tried to attack me.”
There was no indication that he was even listening.
“I am not learning,” she reiterated. “Aren’t you supposed to be teaching me?”
Still nothing.
Her jaw tightened. “You left me with an impossible recipe and no guidance, and if this is some kind of test—” She cut herself off with a sharp breath. “—fine. But I can’t tell what you’re testing. Patience? Endurance? Whether I’ll lose my mind and drink the poison myself?”
The brief sounds from his desk halted.
“I need help.” Her voice dropped in tone, the words scraped raw on the way out. She hated this. She hated how he always drew her back to him, forcing her to beg for something. “All I’m learning is that I hate this book and I hate you.” That last part slipped out before she could stop it.
She waited, counting his frightfully, frustratingly even and steady breaths. She counted the space between her heartbeats. She counted to ten, and then to twenty.
He wasn’t going to respond.
Her hands curled into fists. “Fine,” she snapped. “Just … wanted you to know.”
That you hate him? Hymn asked.
Yes, she drawled back sarcastically, that’s exactly what I wanted him to know.
You’re not being sarcastic at all, are you?
No, she grumbled.
She turned on her heel and stalked out, letting the door slam behind her hard enough that it rattled something on the wall. She didn’t particularly care what it was, but she secretly hoped it was one of his obsidian daggers, and that it bounced right off the floor and propelled it into his stupid, silent head.
Or one of the axes, Hymn chimed in.
She went straight to the greenhouse, while Hymn seemed to get caught on which weapon would cause the most damage if it magically rebounded off the floor and propelled itself into Chasin’s face.
The humidity caressed her skin as she stepped inside. The scent was still comforting, despite her many afternoons of failure. At least here she could fail alone, without an audience.
Definitely the axe, Hymn decided.
She slapped her hands against the open book and briefly pulled on her second sight, checking the page.
Nulla Forma.
Gritting her teeth and bracing her spine, she started again from scratch. She could navigate her workstation blind now, and she could identify most of the ingredients by touch and smell, making it easy to feel her way through the process, using her second sight for the briefest glimpses only when she needed it. In a way, she owed her rapid familiarisation of the space to the fact that she had been repeating the exact same recipe over and over and over, with only slight variations. But she would never admit that to Chasin, or anyone else.
I didn’t hear anything, Hymn promised helpfully.
Good, she said. And then she failed at the recipe even faster than yesterday, the mixture curdling almost immediately. She swore colourfully, reset her workstation, and tried again.
The next version seized and hardened so abruptly that it cracked the bowl.
She froze, her breath shallow, her heart hammering.
And then she tried again.
By the time the sky darkened, she was sitting on the stone floor with her back against the bench, her head tipped to the ceiling, fighting back tears.
The vial beside the book remained empty.
Her evening lesson in Brightfort loomed: a distant, inevitable threat. Another opportunity to fail at something, although this time, she would have a gaggle of resigned, heavily sighing royal attendants to titter and tut over every misstep.
She dragged herself upright and set herself to cleaning the bench with the same grim thoroughness as always, and then she left the greenhouse.

85%

Maybe it was her relationship with Ren.
Hymn? she asked. I think you have to tell me now.
Tell you what? He was faking confusion. He knew exactly what she was asking. She could feel him knowing, just as he could feel her intention.
Because they weren’t entirely separate—not the way they should have been.
She had his powers.
She had his appetite, his monster tendencies, and she could feel them growing. The more she used his abilities, the more that monster side of her grew. The more she hungered.
You need to tell me what power you manifested the day I found you, she said. Because now we know it’s not just yours. It’s also mine.
He was silent for so long, she was beginning to wonder if he had disappeared into the Quiet, running away to avoid the question. But finally, he spoke, his voice barely above a whisper.
The shadowsong.
Goosebumps popped up along her arms, but Ren was there to hug her tighter, his lips ghosting the back of her head, his strong thigh thrown over hers. She was smothered, captured, utterly safe and cared for.
She didn’t deserve him.
What is that? she asked Hymn.
Control. His voice trembled, sounding afraid of his own power. Complete and utter control.
Of? she asked, confused, unable to fight back the growing sense of dread spreading across her skin.
Everyone and everything. With just a word. The shadowsong can change reality or make someone obey.
She swallowed tightly, fear coiling in her stomach. I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t you tell me that? I could have changed King Grigori’s mind. I could have … I don’t know, I could have used it!
If the second sight is a flicker, the shadowsong is an inferno. Think of how a single word of it will burn through you. Even one word might kill you. That’s why I didn’t tell you.
Eiko lay very still. Ren’s breathing was steady behind her, slow and grounding, his body an anchor. The window creaked softly as the wind pressed against the panes. Somewhere far below, the sea crashed faintly against the mountain.
Control, she thought, turning the word over carefully, like a shard of glass examined under a bright light. Complete and utter control.
Don’t even think about it, Hymn warned, his voice a ferocious whip, the sharpest he had ever sounded.
I wasn’t, she lied begrudgingly.
You could die, Eiko. You could kill us both. I trusted you enough to tell you. Don’t betray me.
All right, all right. But why did everyone want to kill you that day? Just because of this power?
Do you remember when I told you that monsters eat each other?
She shuddered, and Ren squeezed her gently, soothing her.
Yes?
Well, Hymn said distastefully, when a monster consumes another monster, if they’re strong enough, they have a chance of stealing their power. The shadowsong is feared, even in the Quiet. Most monsters will want to kill me to eradicate it. The strongest monsters will want to kill me to gain it for themselves. That’s why we can’t let any of them touch me. That day, my family called me world-killer. They were so scared of me that they tried to end me.
She turned, snuggling into the warmth of Ren’s bare chest. There was no tug low in her stomach, or tickling sense of excitement, only a deep need for comfort and familiarity. So deep and overwhelming that she couldn’t seem to get close enough, but Ren could sense it, somehow, and he drew her flush against him again, his hands soothing along her spine.
He loved her, she realised.
She knew it as surely as she knew that … she didn’t love him in return.
What a mess, she said, turning her face to brush her tears away against the sheets before Ren could feel them on his skin.
Hymn drifted up to her neck, gently coiling around the tightness in her throat, his little head nudging her jaw.
You’re a good person, he insisted. He’s lucky to have you as a friend.
You aren’t scared of his monster finding you right now? she asked Hymn.
His monster is tightly leashed. It always is around you. Their monsters aren’t like Chasin’s or King Grigori’s; they aren’t powerful enough to sense where I am, to search your body for me. They will feel that something is nearby, but your friends always keep them contained.
She hugged Ren even tighter.
Of course they were putting in extra effort for her without ever once mentioning it.
She didn’t deserve any of them.

86% I love these characters

Do we like Chasin now? Hymn asked, apparently confused by the mild elation ripping through her bloodstream.
Don’t be ridiculous. She quickly sobered. Silly monster.
Just checking, he appeased her quickly.
He’s clever, but we don’t really value intelligence around here, she insisted.
Yes, he readily agreed. What do we value, just so I know?
Gemstones, she replied. And, have you noticed, there weren’t any gemstones on that coffee tray?
Of course I noticed, Hymn huffed.
Then you know what that means.
Chasin is a miserable excuse for a commander, a poison-master, and a man, Hymn growled. And we hope one of his axes falls off his wall and decapitates him!
Exactly!