Discordant Note | TBATE

Chapter 113: Like Clockwork

Toren Daen

I cradled the metal bird in my hands, looking from it to the asuran shade at my side and back again. "Aurora?" I asked uncertainly. My vision was coated in the misting layers of the Unseen World, revealing her to my sight just by my shoulder. That helped me relax. At the exact second I'd finished imbuing the relic with lifeforce, all my communication with her had shut off for a brief moment. Feeling that reassuring tether to my mind allowed my shoulders to slump.

My bond twitched her finger, and the bird stumbled slightly. "This is strange," she said, both the ghostly shade and the little clockwork relic emitting the words. "As if I am in two places at once. To influence this craft..."

Aurora bore a look of extreme concentration on her dusky purple face. Her finger twitched again, and I could swear I heard some sort of humming as the bird shifted again.

"What's going on, Toren?" Sevren said, staring intently at the little bird in my hands. "Is it... Your bond? Is it in there, somehow?"

"Not quite, Artificer," Lady Dawn replied. "Though your supposition was close. You are still ever the scientist with your observations."

My bond clenched her hands, and the bird finally stabilized itself. The eyes of the little steampunk sparrow mimicked those of my bond, and the unique color of my lifeforce bled through the tiny cracks in its burnished metal. "I am merely puppeteering this relic. Guiding it along strings."

I honed in on that strange buzz, finally sensing the connection my Bond had made with the little bird. I raised a hand, brushing it through the open air.

When my fingers passed through where I heard the rhythm, I got flashes of sensation. Wispy vision, heightened mana senses, and more. I saw myself from a tiny perspective, looking upward with sharp eyes. I looked into my own eyes.

I got a flash of what Aurora sees through the relic, I realized after a moment, the strange split perspective of seeing two separate and conflicting images making me nauseous for a moment.

As Aurora tested her tethers, she gradually became more adept at making the little relic move. From what I'd sensed, she didn't have a sense of touch, but her other senses were heightened in the little construct.

The bronze sparrow flapped its wings, rotating its neck to turn around. "It has been so long since I could affect the physical world," the little bird said, sounding almost mournful. With an effort of direction, my bond directed the little sparrow toward Sevren. "You have given me much, allowing my Contractor to brush this relic. More than you may know, Artificer."

I thought of how Aurora was forever condemned to watch from the sidelines. She could never speak to another besides me. I was essentially her one and only keeper. And I could never imagine living such a sheltered existence.

From how her emotions fluctuated, I knew Aurora herself was struggling to truly reconcile this new situation. She could affect things now. She could talk to people. Have a life outside what she watched like an absent spectator.

Sevren looked at me, a strange pinch to his face, before orienting on the bird in my hands. "That relic isn't yours, asura," he said quietly. "It's mine. And I never agreed to give it to you."

The clockwork bird stopped abruptly. The only sound I heard was the faint whirring from within the frame, puffs of purple mist exiting a small valve. "You will keep this from me?" she said, her voice restrained. But I could tell Sevren's words had struck a nerve. "What would you ask for in return?"

"I want to know," the Denoir heir said after a moment, "What you want. I've been told that I won't succeed with my own methods. But you're... asura, aren't you? Where do your loyalties lie?"