Volume Two: The Wandering Knight
The first lightning split the sky, and the rain came down, sparse at first, then all at once, hammering the city below.
Neon light caught the water on every surface, fractured into colors that had no natural equivalent, the kind of glow that made this city look like somewhere that hadn't been built yet. Vivid. Relentless. Beautiful.
The alleyway behind the shopping district didn't get any of that light.
Black garbage bags stacked against both walls, the overflow of a city that had decided the math of returns and processing didn't work out in its favor.
Broken appliances. Cosmetics with minor defects.
Backpacks with broken zippers.
Everything slightly wrong, everything discarded in the same narrow strip of dark between two profitable buildings.
Something in the pile moved.
A low, confused sound came out of it.
"Ngh..."
Black hair. Blue eyes. Features that would have read as severe under any circumstances, and currently read as severely disoriented.
Left wrist ending cleanly where a hand should have been.
Raphael.
Cold rain ran down his face and pooled in the hollows of his collarbones, tracking along the lines of his stomach and dripping to the ground.
The water had cleaned most of the surface off him, and replaced it with the particular cold that got into the bone and stayed.
"...God. I actually thought I was dead."
He pushed himself upright against the wall, slow, and rubbed his face.
The rain brought him partially back to himself, his head still rang with a dull, deep ache, and something about his memory felt like a room where the furniture had been rearranged in the dark, familiar shapes in wrong places.
But the instinct underneath the confusion was clear. 'Not here. Can't stay here'.
He was completely naked. Rebirth, apparently, did not include the courtesy of clothing. The rain found him efficiently.
He started moving toward the alley entrance, unsteady, the dizziness building rather than fading.
Memory gaps kept surfacing without warning, each one hitting like a small impact, the accumulated weight of them making it hard to hold a straight line.
The rain intensified, going from heavy to the kind that made it difficult to see more than a few meters ahead.
Light footsteps at the alley entrance. Quick, the rhythm of someone moving through rain with purpose. Getting closer.
Raphael opened his mouth. Didn't make it further than that.
He tipped forward and went down.
The figure who appeared at the alley entrance a moment later was a young woman, fashionable clothes, the current popular cut, blue jeans, white sneakers taking the puddles without any particular grace.
One hand held an umbrella that the wind had already rendered largely theoretical.
The other held a phone she kept checking against the reality around her, the two not matching up.
"That's weird, navigation says this is the right street, straight through to the guesthouse, but it's just garbage here... maybe there used to be a path and it got blocked off..."
She didn't seem particularly surprised by this. Then she looked down.
A man. Completely, unambiguously naked. Face-down in the alley.
With the kind of build that appeared in certain categories of commercial photography.
"Oh my GOD. A wild naked man—?!"
She registered her own reaction, registered that her face was doing something she couldn't control, pressed her lips together.
And appeared to cycle through approximately seven different responses in rapid succession, indecent, shameless, drunk, absolute pervert, okay actually those muscles, focus.
"Are you... are you okay?"
No response. Rain running over him freely.
"Hey. This is actually dangerous. Wake up."
She crouched, letting the rain hit her back, and angled the umbrella to cover him. She reached out and shook his shoulder.
A sharp sensation ran through her fingertips the moment she made contact. Like static, but warmer. Gone before she could identify it.
Deep in Raphael's unconscious, something registered.
[Witch detected.]
[Crossroads of Fate: Witch — Elena Silva.]
[Synchronization rate: 0.01%.]
[Fate Bond established.]
Elena looked at her phone. Dead. Completely, untimely dead.
"...Are you serious right now."
She stood and paced the short length of available pavement, weighing options. She looked at the unconscious man.
She looked at the alley exit. She looked at the man again.
The decent impulse won, barely.
"Okay. Okay fine. I'm doing this."
She got him upright with the surprising ease of someone who'd been strong since childhood, wrapped his arm over her shoulders, and started moving.
"Lucky you found me specifically... anyone else and you'd still be lying in the garbage..."
She made the mistake of glancing sideways.
"OKAY why is it just RIGHT THERE—"
She looked away hard, face blazing, then set her jaw and kept walking.
After a moment of consideration, she unslung her bag from her shoulder and hung it off his hip.
It covered the relevant geography. Marginally.
"This man is definitely some drunk who stripped off in the middle of the night thinking he was Tarzan..."
The rain had cleared the streets. Small mercy.
Fifteen minutes later, the guesthouse door.
Elena stood in front of it and contemplated the social landscape she was about to enter.
Then she gathered her hair, looped it around the lower half of her face, tied it off.
Makeshift mask. She took a breath with the energy of someone walking toward something they've accepted can't be avoided, and pushed the door open.
The woman at the front desk was middle-aged, cheerfully round, and had the guesthouse to herself at this hour.
She looked up.
"Oh my—"
A whistle.
"Little Elena! Where did you order this one from? And he's naked?
Were you two outside doing? Honestly, good for you, young people these days..."
Elena's makeshift disguise had lasted approximately one second.
"He's NOT a model! I found him! On the street!"
The landlady's expression progressed from impressed to deeply impressed.
"Found him? Where? Near a bar, I'm guessing?
Though I have to say, Elena, even so, stripping the man before you get him inside, a little forward, don't you think?
Look at those abs. Look at those, goodness. I wish I still found things like that on the street."
"That is NOT what happened, we are completely STRANGERS, I saw him lying there and I—UGH, I can't explain this to you..."
She gave up, grabbed Raphael's arm, and moved for the stairs with an urgency she hadn't known she possessed.
The landlady watched them go with the warm smile of someone who believes she has correctly identified exactly what's happening.
"Ah, to be young."