Chapter 7: The Price of Admission
Three days wasn't enough time to conjure twenty gold marks from thin air, but Orin tried anyway.
The problem with sudden capability was that it bred equally sudden ambition. A week ago, passing the academy exams had been fantasy, the kind of daydream that kept you warm while reality froze you solid. Now he'd passed, and the fantasy had transformed into a bill he couldn't pay.. at least not right now.
He spent the first day exploring options that ranged from impossible to suicidal.
Legitimate work? A blackstone laborer earned maybe thirty copper a week. Twenty gold marks was six hundred and sixty-six copper. Twenty-two weeks of wages, assuming he didn't eat, didn't pay rent, didn't exist as a biological entity with needs.
Theft? The noble quarter had wealth, sure.. but it also had guards who'd proven willing to kill over stolen monster parts. Going back there was volunteering for a noose.
Begging? Rich people didn't give charity to blackstones. They gave advice about hard work and personal responsibility, which spent exactly like insults at the market.
By evening, Orin found himself back at Marrow's shop, desperation driving him toward the only person who'd shown interest in his continued survival.
The butcher was closing when Orin arrived, pulling heavy shutters across windows that had probably witnessed decades of commercial brutality. He saw Orin and sighed, the sound of a man recognizing incoming problems.
"Heard you passed the academy trials," Marrow said, not looking up from his work. "Also heard about the dead guard. Coincidence, I'm sure."
Orin's stomach dropped. "I.. I didn't mean to kill him, that wasn't my intention!"
"Intention and outcome shake hands at funerals, boy. Doesn't matter what you meant." Marrow finished securing the shutters and turned to face him. "You're in deep. Guards are looking for whoever hit that convoy. They know it was someone fast, strong. but they also know that only a blackstone would be stupid enough to steal from them, they'll scratch their heads for a minute but there's already whispers about you."
"They can't prove anything."
"For fuck sake Orin! They don't need proof. They need suspicion and a blackstone to blame." Marrow gestured toward the shop's interior. "Inside. Standing out into her street will draw eyes."
The shop's back room smelled like preserved death and chemical necessity. Hooks hung empty at this hour, their chains swaying slightly from the door's movement. A table dominated the center space, stained with substances that predated Orin's birth.
Marrow pulled two stools from a corner, sat heavily on one, pointed Orin toward the other. "Twenty gold marks for tuition. That's what you came to discuss."
"How did you know?"
"Because you're predictable in your desperation. You need money, you have capabilities nobody should know about, and you're stupid enough to think you can thread that needle." Marrow's expression was granite, sympathy carved out and discarded. "You can't."
"There has to be a way."
"There are ways. Most of them end with you dead or owned." The butcher leaned forward, elbows on knees. "I could lend you the money. I have it, saved from forty years of selling meat nobody else would touch. But lending requires collateral, and what do you have?"
Orin looked at his hands. "My service. I could work for you."
"Doing what? Running errands? That's copper work, not gold. You'd be paying me back until your grandchildren inherited the debt." Marrow shook his head. "No. What you're really offering is that birthstone. That strange, broken, beautiful thing that drinks essence like a man dying of thirst."
The observation landed cold. "You want my birthstone?"
"I want to understand it. Study it. Figure out if whatever makes you special can be replicated." Marrow's voice dropped into something almost gentle his voice catching a little, "My son died because his blue stone wasn't enough. If I could give other blackstones and the poorer blue and green stones what you have, give them fighting chances instead of predetermined failures, that would mean something."
Orin felt the void stone pulse beneath his palm, responding to the conversation or maybe protecting itself. "It's part of me. I can't just remove it."
"No. But you could let me study you. Regular examinations, essence flow analysis, attempting to map whatever makes your stone different." Marrow spread his hands, palms up. "In exchange, I pay your tuition. All of it. You get your academy education, I get my research. Everyone profits except the system that wants us both crushed."
It was logical. Fair, even, by the standards of transactions between the desperate. But something in Orin's gut twisted at the thought of becoming a research subject, poked, measured and catalogued.
"I need to think about it."
"You have three days. Thinking is expensive when your on the clock.. I hope you consider." Marrow stood, moved to a cabinet, pulled out a wrapped package. "Meanwhile, take this. Free sample of my generosity."
Orin unwrapped it. Inside, four vials of preserved essence, each one labeled with neat script. Razorwing talons, grade three. Marsh serpent venom sacs, grade three. Not garbage this time. Real cultivation materials.
"Why?"
"Because I'm investing in potential, and potential needs feeding." Marrow's smile was brief and bitter. "Also because watching you grow stronger is the most interesting thing that's happened in this miserable shit pit of a district in the last decade. Call it entertainment value."
Orin pocketed the vials, feeling their weight.. heavier than they probably were." If I do this, if I let you study me, nobody else can know."
"Obviously Orin, I haven't survived this long as a fuck wit, discretion is survival." Marrow walked him toward the door. "Two days left. Decide if you want to climb or if you want to stay comfortable in the embrace of the shit stain you call a life. Most people choose comfort, It tends to kill you slower... Well slower than what your doing anyway."
The street outside was settling into the evening's dangerous hours. Orin navigated by instinct and paranoia, taking routes that avoided guard patrols and gang territories. The vials sat heavy in his pocket, temptation wrapped in glass.
He made it back to his warehouse sanctuary, lit a candle and examined his options with the cold calculation of someone running out of choices.
Option one: Accept Marrow's deal. Become a research subject, trade privacy for opportunity. Risks unknown, benefits clear.
Option two: Accept Caius's offer. Trade independence for sponsorship, become beholden to nobility. Risks obvious, benefits poisoned.
Option three: Find twenty gold marks through methods that didn't require selling pieces of himself.
That option was hilarious fantasy, and he dismissed it immediately.
He pulled out the vials, studying the preserved essence. Grade three was solidly military territory. Green-stones with combat training used these to enhance their capabilities, pushing attributes into ranges that made them dangerous.
*Feed the stone. Get stronger. Figure out next steps from a position of power.*
The logic was sound. Probably. Hard to think clearly when hunger and the void stone's appetite started blending together.
He uncapped the first vial. Razorwing talons, dissolved in alchemical suspension. The liquid was amber, viscous, smelling sharp and metallic. He pressed the vial to his birthstone.
The void stone drank.
The voice returned, clinical and absolute.
**"ESSENCE ABSORBED: RAZORWING ALPHA, GRADE THREE. INTEGRATION COMMENCING."**
Pain arrived, familiar now almost like an old friend. His hands cramped, bones shifting, ligaments rewiring themselves. He bit down on leather, riding the transformation.
**ESSENCE ABSORBED: RAZORWING ALPHA, GRADE THREE**
**INTEGRATION COMPLETE.**
**ATTRIBUTE ENHANCEMENT: DEXTERITY +7, SPEED +6**
The numbers climbed. His fingers felt different, more precise somehow. He flexed them, watching tendons move with fluid efficiency. The dexterity enhancement was tangible, his body responding faster to intention.
Three more vials. Three more transformations.
By the time he finished, Orin lay on the warehouse floor, sweat-soaked and shaking, his body rewritten. The interface appeared in his mind, numbers glowing with achievement.
**ORIN FOX**
**AGE: 15**
**ESSENCE STORED: 13/∞**
**ATTRIBUTES:**
**STRENGTH: 43**
**DURABILITY: 43**
**VITALITY: 29**
**DEXTERITY: 40**
**SPEED: 35**
He was past green-stone baseline in every primary attribute now. Strength and durability were approaching veteran levels. If he kept feeding the void stone, kept climbing, where did the ceiling exist?
*No ceiling. Unlimited storage.*
The thought should have been triumphant. Instead, it tasted like borrowed time and bitter consequences of he didn't make a decision.
A noise outside. Footsteps, multiple sets, moving with purpose. Orin doused the candle, pressed himself against the wall, controlling his breathing.
Voices filtered through the warehouse's broken structure.
"Around here somewhere my informant said, a blackstone kid with a weird birthstone, hangs around abandoned buildings. When he's not sleeping in that cesspit with the rest of the orphans"
*Shit! Gaurds..* Orin thought, Hunting for him specifically.
"Probably the one who hit the convoy. Twenty gold bounty for information leading to arrest."
Orin's blood froze. Twenty gold for his capture. The exact amount he needed for his tuition. The Universe had a sense of humor, apparently.
"Check the upper floors. Kid's probably sleeping off his stupidity."
Orin could hear boots creeping up the stairs. Coming closer.
Orin moved silently, enhanced dexterity making him ghost-quiet. He slipped through a gap in the warehouse wall and emerged into the alley beyond. Behind him, the guards were searching his sanctuary, finding nothing but old candle wax.
He ran. Not panicked, controlled. Forty speed points and enhanced endurance carried him through the slums' intestinal maze. The guards' shouts faded behind him distant now.
He needed a new hiding place. Needed to stay invisible until the tuition deadline. Three days of avoiding guards while deciding on his options.
The slums offered no comfort, just familiar hostility. He passed warehouses full of blackstones sleeping in shifts, taverns selling poison that pretended to be ale, street corners where violence happened and nobody intervened.
Maya stepped out of a doorway ahead, her appearance too convenient to be coincidence.
"They're looking for you," she said without preamble. "Whole district is talking about a Blackstone kid who killed a guard, stole from nobility with a twenty gold bounty on his head!."
"I didn't steal much, I didn't mean to hurt anyone!."
"You stole enough you fucking idiot!." She glanced over her shoulder, checking for followers. "They're offering bounties for information. People around here would sell their mothers for twenty gold. You're not safe anywhere."
"Where am I supposed to go?"
Maya studied him, her blackstone glinting dull in the streetlight. "I have a place. Shared with three other girls, all failed candidates. We're invisible to the system. One more invisible person won't be noticed."
"Why help me?"
"Because you passed." Her voice cracked slightly. "You're a blackstone who passed every trial. That means something. That means maybe the system isn't absolute." She stepped closer, urgent. "Also because if they catch you, they'll make an example out of you. Blackstones need to remember their place. Your success makes us dangerous in their eyes."
Orin weighed his options. Trust someone he barely knew, or sleep on rooftops while guards hunted for him. Not much choice, really.
"Fuck it.. Lead the way."
They moved through alleys that smelled like piss and grime, past buildings held together with slowly rotting beams. Maya's place was a converted storage room, barely large enough for four sleeping mats and absolutely no chance of privacy.
Three girls looked up when they entered. All blackstones, all carrying the particular exhaustion from defeat at the trials.
"This is Orin," Maya said. "He's staying until the guards stop hunting for him."
The girls exchanged glances. One of them, older maybe seventeen, studied him with calculating eyes. "The one who passed the exams?"
"Yes."
"And killed a guard?"
"Accidentally."
"Accidentally." The girl's laugh was sharp. "Nothings accidental when you're blackstoned. Everything's intentional, at least that's how the guards will see it either way."
She stood, extended a hand scarred from factory work. "I'm Sera, as Long as you're here, you follow house rules. No stealing from us, no bringing guards to our door, no pretending you're better because you got lucky."
Orin took her hand. "Agreed."
"Good." Sera released his grip. "You've got two days until tuition deadline, right?"
"Three."
"Three. And about twenty gold marks short of admission." She settled back onto her mat. "We've all been there. That moment where you see a door open and realize you can't afford to walk through. Most people accept it. Go back to factories or brothels or an early grave... What's your plan?"
"Still deciding."
"Decide faster. Opportunities close quicker than they open." Sera closed her eyes, dismissing him. "That mat in the corner is yours, if you wake me with snoring I won't hesitate to stick a knife in your throat." She said with a sardonic smile.
Orin claimed the mat, laying down on the fabric that smelled like other people's failures. Around him, the girls settled into sleep or pretended to.
His birthstone pulsed against his palm, silver specks swirling. Forty-three strength, forty-three durability. Attributes that could break bones, kill people, overcome obstacles that would have previously killed him.
Two days to decide: Marrow's research subject, Caius's sponsored servant, or something else he hadn't imagined yet.
The void stone offered no advice. It just hummed with stored essence, patient and hungry, waiting to see what its host would feed it next.
Orin closed his eyes and dreamed of doors he couldn't afford, guards he couldn't outrun, and a future that required selling pieces of himself to people who'd probably never truly see him as human.
When he woke, he'd have to choose which pieces to sell and hope he kept enough to still recognize himself afterward.