Chapter 8: Natasha's Gifts

Commander Natasha built a fire with the efficient movements of a person who had built thousands of fires in thousands of locations and who regarded the process not as a camping skill but as a fundamental life competency, like breathing or situational awareness.

They had moved two kilometres from the ambush site — Natasha's insistence, delivered in a tone that did not invite discussion — to a sheltered hollow above the trail where a rock overhang provided cover from above and the terrain provided sightlines in three directions. Her barynx and euobiloceros had been dismissed to the Shadow Realm, but Ranger remained materialised at Sumi's side, his ears rotating in continuous surveillance of the surrounding forest.

"Sit," Natasha said, and they sat, because Commander Natasha was the kind of person whose instructions were followed not because of her rank but because of the unmistakable competence that radiated from her like body heat.

She looked at them. Her eyes — dark brown, deeply set beneath the grey fringe of her cropped hair — moved from face to face with the evaluating attention of an officer who was accustomed to assessing people quickly and who had learned, over decades, to trust her assessments.

"First," she said. "The man who attacked you is named Chirag. He is a rogue caster — not affiliated with LoSC, not subject to LoSC authority, and not constrained by LoSC rules. He was, briefly, a LoSC officer. He was expelled for unauthorised use of dark flame, which — as you witnessed — is a shadow casting technique that LoSC has banned for very good reasons."

"What reasons?" Nigel asked, because Nigel's response to being told that something was banned was to want to understand the technical rationale for the ban, on the theory that understanding the rule was the first step to following it correctly.

Natasha's expression suggested she appreciated the question. "Dark flame is not a shadow technique. It's a corruption of one. Standard shadow casting works with light — you project a beam, the beam creates shadows, you form symbols in the shadows to manifest creatures and objects. The shadows are the medium. Dark flame reverses the process. Instead of using light to create shadows, it uses the caster's own shadow energy as fuel. The energy comes from the caster's bond with the Shadow Realm — the same bond that allows telepathic communication with shadow creatures. Using dark flame degrades that bond. Over time, the caster's shadow creatures become unstable, aggressive, difficult to control. The caster themselves becomes... altered. More ruthless. Less empathetic. The bond with the Shadow Realm is not just a casting mechanism — it's a moderating influence on the caster's temperament. Dark flame erodes that influence."

"So Chirag is dangerous not just because of what he can do," Sumi said, "but because of what using dark flame has done to him."

"Precisely. He was talented — genuinely talented, one of the most promising junior officers of his generation. But he became fascinated with dark flame after discovering fragments of pre-Purge texts that described the technique. He taught himself. He practiced in secret. By the time LoSC discovered what he was doing, the damage to his bond was significant. He was expelled, and he disappeared into the highlands. That was eight years ago."

"And now he wants the canister," Kaito said.

"Now he wants the canister. Or rather, the people who employed him want the canister. Chirag is a mercenary — he works for whoever pays him. The question of who is paying him is one that Master Toshio and I have been attempting to answer for some time."

She gave them information in measured doses — enough to inform, not enough to overwhelm. Kaito recognised the technique from Toshio's teaching: provide the student with what they need to know, withhold what they don't, and trust them to ask for the rest when they're ready.

What they needed to know was this:

The canister they carried contained a message from Master Toshio to Master Ganesh, the LoSC commander in Torcia. The message concerned intelligence that Toshio had gathered about a growing threat to LoSC's authority — not a military threat, like Lord Izanagi's army in the north, but a political one. Factions within the lonrelmian government were manoeuvring to reduce LoSC's autonomy, to place shadow casters under stricter civilian oversight, and ultimately to weaken the Legion's ability to operate independently.

"This has happened before," Natasha said. "The political pressure that preceded the Purge began with exactly these kinds of proposals — reasonable-sounding restrictions that gradually accumulated until the shadow casters had been regulated into powerlessness. Toshio sees the pattern. Ganesh, who has connections in the lonrelmian political establishment, needs to see it too."

"But why hand-deliver a message?" Nigel asked. "Why not use the LoSC courier network?"

"Because the LoSC courier network passes through administrative channels that are, Toshio believes, compromised. Not by enemies — by bureaucrats who would read the message, decide it was alarmist, and either delay it or redact it. The courier system is secure against external threats but not against internal ones. Toshio needed the message delivered directly to Ganesh, by people he trusted, outside the official channels."

"And Chirag was hired to intercept it."

"Yes. By someone who either knows what the message contains or suspects its importance. Which means the threat Toshio describes in the message is not theoretical — it's active, and the people behind it are already taking steps to prevent LoSC from responding."

The weight of this settled over them like a second cloak. Kaito felt the canister in his pack — the same metal cylinder he had been carrying for seven days, its physical weight unchanged, its symbolic weight now immeasurably greater. A message about a political threat to LoSC. The possibility of a second Purge. The people trying to stop the message from getting through.

Their first commission was not a delivery assignment. It was the first move in a conflict that they had not known existed until five minutes ago.

"Why are you telling us this?" Sumi asked. Her voice was level but her eyes were intense — the particular intensity that Sumi displayed when she was processing information that mattered and constructing a response that would be both careful and honest.

"Because you deserve to know what you're carrying and why. And because knowing will make you better at protecting it. Ignorance is not security — it's vulnerability."

Natasha travelled with them for two days.

During those two days, she taught them things that the Sanctuary curriculum did not cover and that Toshio, constrained by LoSC regulations regarding what could be taught to junior officers, had not been permitted to teach.

She taught Sumi advanced shadow hound techniques — methods for extending Ranger's sensory range, for using his Shadow Realm perception to detect not just shadow energy but emotional states, for channelling the bond to enhance Sumi's own awareness of her surroundings. Ranger responded to the training with the eager competence of a shadow creature that had been waiting for someone to ask more of him than basic tracking and combat.

She taught Nigel the theory of shadow barriers — not the basic containment technique he had used in the Daylight Trials, but the advanced defensive applications that senior officers used in field operations: shields, wards, proximity alarms, the invisible perimeter defences that could be set around a campsite and that would trigger an alert if any shadow energy — or any physical presence above a certain mass — crossed the barrier line.

And she taught Kaito something he had not expected.

"Your instincts are good," she said, on the first evening, as they sat apart from the others by a stream that ran over moss-covered stones with a sound that was more like music than water. "Your casting speed is exceptional. Your creativity — the way you think laterally about shadow applications — is rare. These are genuine gifts."

"But," Kaito said, because there was always a "but."

"But you don't control them. You use them. There's a difference. Using a gift means deploying it when the situation demands it. Controlling a gift means choosing when not to deploy it. The best casters I've known — and I've known many, including your father — were not the ones with the most powerful casts. They were the ones who knew when to cast and when to wait."

"You knew my father?"

Natasha's expression shifted — a subtle change, barely visible in the firelight, but Kaito caught it: the particular contraction of features that accompanies a memory that is both treasured and painful.

"I trained with him. Before he became a senior officer. Before you were born." She paused. "He had the same gifts you have. The speed. The creativity. The tendency to act before thinking. And he learned — eventually, after considerable difficulty — to channel those gifts rather than be channelled by them. The difference between your father at seventeen and your father at thirty was the difference between a fire that burns whatever it touches and a fire that lights what needs to be lit."

Kaito said nothing. The stream moved over its stones. The sound was continuous and variable, the way water always is — never the same note twice, never the same rhythm, never silent. He thought about his father, who existed in his mind as an absence rather than a presence — a shape in the family story that was defined by the things other people said about him and the space he had left when he stopped being there to fill it.

"How did he die?" Kaito asked. He had asked this question before — of his mother, of Toshio, of the LoSC records office — and had received the same answer every time: "In service. The details are classified." It was the answer that LoSC gave to all families of officers killed in operations that the Legion had decided were too sensitive for public knowledge.

Natasha looked at him for a long time. The fire reflected in her eyes, which were steady and serious and carried the weight of a decision she was making in real time.

"Your father died protecting something that mattered," she said. "I cannot tell you more than that. Not because I don't want to, but because the circumstances of his death are connected to the situation you're in now, and knowing the details would put you at greater risk than you're already in."

"Connected to the canister?"

"Connected to the threat the canister addresses. Your father saw what Toshio sees now — the political manoeuvring, the effort to weaken LoSC. He tried to warn the right people. He was stopped. Not by dark flame or shadow creatures — by the quieter, more effective weapons of bureaucracy and betrayal."

The stream continued its song. The forest was dark around them. And Kaito understood, with a clarity that was physical rather than intellectual — felt in his bones, in his chest, in the tightness of his jaw — that the canister he carried was not just a message. It was a continuation of something his father had started and had not lived to finish.

"I'll deliver it," he said.

"I know you will."

On the morning of the third day, Natasha departed.

"This is as far as I go," she said. "From here, the trail descends into the western lowlands. Torcia is four days away. The terrain is easier but the approach to the city is more populated, which means more eyes. Be careful who you trust. Be careful what you say. And deliver the canister to Ganesh — no one else."

She gave them gifts.

To Sumi, a small crystal that enhanced caster beam stability — fitted to the base of her beam projector, it would produce a steadier, brighter light that cast sharper, more defined shadows. "Your technique is already excellent," Natasha said. "This will make it precise."

To Nigel, a slim journal bound in leather — not blank, but filled with shadow casting annotations in a hand that Kaito did not recognise. "This belonged to a master who died during the Purge," Natasha said. "It contains shadow symbols that are not in your guidebook. Some may be beyond your current ability. Study them anyway."

To Kaito, she gave nothing physical. Instead, she placed her hand on his shoulder and said: "Your father would be proud of you. Not because of what you can do, but because of who you are becoming."

Then she recalled her barynx and euobiloceros — the two massive shadow creatures materialising briefly beside her, their forms rippling with controlled power — and she walked into the forest, and the forest received her, and within thirty seconds she had vanished as completely as if she had never been there.

The three junior officers stood on the trail and looked at one another.

"Well," Nigel said, tucking the journal into his pack with the careful reverence of a person who had been given a holy text. "That was... a lot."

"Four days to Torcia," Sumi said. "Let's move."

They moved. The trail descended. The forest thinned. And the canister in Kaito's pack — the metal cylinder that contained a dead man's unfinished work and a living teacher's desperate warning — pressed against his spine with every step, its weight no longer the weight of metal but the weight of responsibility, which is heavier, and which does not diminish with distance.