Unnatural Laws (The Whispering Crystals, #1)

by H. C. Mills

  He smiles wryly. “Hey Lily, what’s up?”

  She shrugs. “They don’t have permits.”

  He nods. “Aight, how about you guys come with me, and we’ll get that sorted out?”

  I frown. “What does getting permits entail, exactly?”

  “The only requirement to get them is that you get registered with the council,” Steve explains. “It’s mostly a formality, really. We just wanna make sure we’ve met everyone, and that they’re all aware of the rules.”

  I exchange a glance with Dave. He shrugs minutely.

  Agreed. Even knowing that Steve is running with the council, I still don’t trust ’em, so I’d also rather not get registered, but it sounds like we don’t have a choice.

  I sigh exaggeratedly. “All right then, dude, show us where we can get registered.”

  Steve leads us to a large hut, while Kaitlynn pokes and nags at him. “Hey, Steve, those rules you were talking about, what do they say about people who try to take things from their rightful owners, like Mea—like Bruce?”

  Steve, to his credit, endures the onslaught of annoyance like a pro. “Yeah, we had some complaints about him, though managed to settle most of the disputes. Just FYI, he used up his last hunting permit yesterday; his team should have enough Minor Lavi Crystals to level up now, so if you see them still hunting the Blue-Scaled Trigot, let us know.”

  Well, that’s more than I’d expected.

  “If you would enter the council’s hut, please,” Steve says, indicating the large shack we’ve arrived at. “You can get registered with Samuel—that’s the council’s secretary—in there, and receive your hunting and temple...” He trails off, then frowns. He nods unnecessarily and responds to someone we can’t see or hear. “Aight, I’m on my way.” He turns back to us. “Duty calls. See you around!” And he hurries off.

  Alec comes walking over. “Hey guys. What did I miss?”

  “Eh, not much,” I say with a shrug. “We’re going in to get chipped by the council, you coming?”

  As we laugh at the look on his face, I try to ignore the little voice in the back of my head that says we’re pretty much already as chipped as we can get, considering one of our eyes has been replaced by a crystal connected to a foreign entity.

  The council’s hut turns out to be partitioned. In the front part there’s a guy—Samuel, I presume—sitting behind a kind of makeshift desk that consists of a large piece of bark on a pile of rocks. Before him stands a vaguely familiar figure. Is that... Bruce’s lackey Emo-kid?

  “Please,” Emo-kid says, his voice low, gravelly, and tinged with desperation. “I don’t know where else to go.”

  Sounds like he’s a former lackey.

  Yikes.

  Samuel sighs. “Look, Jacob, we currently have ten enforcers and five council members. That means we have exactly enough people for three crews in the next Trial. I don’t mind reviewing your application as an enforcer, but... even if we had room for you, it wouldn’t solve your main problem; we can’t get you a new Qi Pearl.”

  He lost his Qi Pearl? What kind of dumbass... Note to self: don’t allow Alec to hold on to his own Qi Pearl.

  Emo-kid—whose name is Jacob, apparently—droops his shoulders and turns around. He’s got a bright yellow eye-crystal and a pale blue eye that painfully reminds me of Josh. That’s where the resemblance ends, thankfully. Jacob’s hair is just as unnatural a shade of black as his clothing and his heavy eyeliner, and one of his eyebrows sports a small steel ring that bears a skull.

  He flinches upon seeing Kaitlynn, then spots me and stumbles into the desk behind him.

  I raise a brow at him. Tssk. You’re going to hurt our feelings, you know? At least I know for sure it’s him now.

  Emo-kid squares his shoulders, raises his chin, and makes his way towards the exit. He glances at us coolly but still gives us a wide berth as he passes us by, leaving Samuel to stare after him in bemusement.

  “I have that effect on guys,” I say when Samuel turns his gaze to me.

  Kaitlynn clasps a hand over her mouth and makes an unflattering snorting sound.

  “Right,” Samuel intones dryly, “I assume you’re here to register?”

  Turns out the first step is pretty innocuous: having our names carved into a large piece of bark with a sharp shard of rock.

  When I ask him about the prehistoric writing tools, he explains that while some people actually did bring along stationery, it no longer works. The ink they have doesn’t seep into the paper, just runs straight off practically anything it’s applied to. Pencil tips just crumble, the Toughness of the graphite too low to make any kind of lasting impression.

  The second step is to accept him as a contact in the Social System, as Dave and Kaitlynn already had, apparently. This way, we can ask for help when we need it, and they can monitor everyone’s locations on his map. Pretty smart. Also, rather creepy.

  Though I suppose we could always unfriend Samuel if we really needed to hide from the council. All in all, it doesn’t sound too bad; everything at least seems to be on the up and up, so we get registered.

  “How many Minor Lavi Crystals do you currently have?” he asks at the end.

  “We don’t have any yet,” I lie with a straight face.

  “Actually, we have one,” Alec answers, eyeing me in confusion.

  Gee, thanks, Narc-o Polo. I glare at him. The secretary raises a brow at me.

  “Oh, duh!” I exclaim, smacking myself on the forehead. “Totally slipped my mind. He’s right, we have one.”

  “Yes, that’s what we heard as well,” Samuel says dryly, with a glance at Kaitlynn.

  Damn, I guess Meathead is also a little Narc-y Drew.

  “Since there are four of you, you can hunt three more trigots,” he says and hands us our hunting and temple permits. Which are also, you know, pieces of bark, with very official-looking carvings on them. Is that supposed to be a penguin? “You can hunt at any of the hollow stumps but let us know when you obtain the Minor Lavi Crystal. If you don’t tell us, we will ask around until we find out who has it.”

  Ooh, scary. “All right, thank you very much,” I say in an overly sweet voice, before turning to leave.

  “Oh, and one more thing, Emma. The Chair would like to see you.”

  Oh boy.

  CHAPTER 34

  Fortune and glory

  AS I PUSH ASIDE the cloth hanging in the doorway, I rack my brain trying to remember the name of the council’s Chair, but come up blank.

  The room I enter is smaller than the one in front, cosier. The woman behind the desk has skin the colour of mocha and shoulder-length hair that’s a shade darker than mine. She’s writing something down—again, by carving into a piece of bark—and doesn’t look up until she’s finished.

  Her remaining eye is deep brown, her eye-crystal magenta. She gets up and reaches out to shake my hand brusquely. “You must be Emma, a pleasure. My name is Rebecca. Please, take a seat.” She indicates the log behind me. Right, Rebecca. I knew that.

  As I sit down, she walks around to casually perch on her desk, then stare me down.

  Man, this is giving me flashbacks of the principal’s office. “Ehm, it’s nice to meet you, too, Rebecca. I was told you wanted to see me?”

  Rebecca’s smile at my question makes me feel like I just made a fatal error in a game of chess. “I called you here because there’s this pesky little rumour circulating, about how you claimed to be a council enforcer. Would you to care to comment on that?”

  Oh boy. Okay, poker face. “Well that’s just slanderous,” I scoff. “I never actually claimed to be an enforcer; I just didn’t bother to correct someone’s mistaken assumption based on the colour of my clothes.”

  [Hmm. That’s not quite how I remember it.]

  What are you, my conscience? At least Suri can’t narc on me.

  Rebecca smirks at me, a twinkle in her eyes. “Hmm. We’ll chalk that rumour up to errors in communication, then.”

  She�
��s letting it go, just like that? Weird.

  “To be honest, I’d be happy to have you as one of our enforcers,” Rebecca says with a sigh. “You’ve certainly got spunk, but the council currently has five members and ten enforcers, so it’s a rather convenient number.”

  “Yeah, Samuel mentioned something like that,” I say, languidly stretching out my legs in front of me. “That’s fine, though, I’m with my own team anyway.”

  “Good,” Rebecca replies, before leaning forward and lowering her voice. “Now, I’m going to be honest. I didn’t call you here to berate you, nor to recruit you.”

  I swallow and raise a brow.

  “You see, there was a second part to that rumour,” she continues. “In fact, that bit was even more outrageous than the first. It goes like this: your Toxic Energy Tolerance is so high that you are able to take Moonshade Sap in your mouth and spray it out as an attack.”

  Ah. That’s going around? Sweet, people will think twice before they mess with us then. “Oh, that part’s all true,” I say, not bothering to suppress my grin. “It’s quite tasty, would you like to try some?” I take out my trusty bottle of death and hold it up for her.

  To her credit, she doesn’t even flinch, just studies it intently for a second before saying, “Appraise.”

  Damn, I didn’t see that coming. If this had been a fake, she’d have me now.

  She reads the Appraisal Window—or pretends to with great skill—then nods curtly.

  “Thanks for the offer, but I’ll have to decline; I’m on duty.”

  Despite myself, I snort.

  She cracks a smile, then turns more serious as I return the bottle to its rightful place. “I’m going to be frank with you, Emma. Currently, the biggest threat to our survival is the unease among the people. Everybody’s afraid and traumatised, and people are doing stupid things.”

  She pushes off the desk and returns to her seat, looking rather drained. For the first time, I notice how sunken her eyes are.

  “The Stardrop Flower has yet to be found, and people are getting restless. Are you familiar with the Moonshade Glade?”

  I shake my head.

  She sighs. “The Moonshade Glade is a huge clearing in the forest that’s full of flowers, including a lot of Moonshade. It’s the deadliest and least explored area in Hub Two. It’s also the most likely—or perhaps at this point only­­—location where the Stardrop Flowers might finally be found. We’ve had several reports over the past week of people entering the Moonshade Glade. The ones who came back all required immediate Detoxification.”

  I don’t like where this is going.

  “If you have the kind of Toxic Energy Tolerance as rumoured, the council would like to beseech you to search for Stardrop Flowers for us in an official capacity. We hope to be able to acquire enough Stardrops for everyone so that further pointless deaths can be avoided.”

  Whoop, there it is.

  Well, it sounds like I’ll have to go there sooner or later, anyway. Though I’m not sure if I want to go through the effort of finding enough Stardrops for everyone, I’ll have to find at least four. And though we can’t be entirely sure that they’re in the Moonshade Glade, it does seem rather likely. After all, the people who built this place are clearly a bunch of sadistic motherf—

  “Of course,” Rebecca adds, interrupting my thought process, “the council will provide you with supplies to make your task easier. And once you succeed, everyone will owe you a great favour.”

  I snort with more power than I had intended. Rebecca’s clothes and hairs flutter in the breeze I produce. Again, she doesn’t even blink. Damn unflappable woman. “All right, I can probably help out. But I have some demands.”

  She nods. “Name your price.”

  Sweet. But what to ask for? I can’t demand Qi Pearls; there’s only one available per person, and nobody would be so stupid as to trade theirs for a Stardrop Flower. I might be able to get Minor Lavi Crystals, but with the whole Hub currently hunting the trigots for them, that might be a hard sell...

  “Well, first of all,” I start while still mulling it over in my head, “I’m keeping the first four Stardrops I find for my team. Actually, make that five. We still need to recruit a fifth member at some point.”

  We should probably level up before holding out that last Stardrop as recruitment bait. That should dramatically decrease the odds of us getting robbed and betrayed by this new person. And once we’re through those doors, any former alliances they might’ve had will be irrelevant.

  Rebecca nods. “Of course. What else?”

  “Minor Lavi Crystals,” I say. “Five of them.” Gotta aim high.

  Rebecca purses her lips. “That’s difficult. The council tries not to hunt too many of the trigots, so everyone can have a chance. Because of that, we don’t exactly have a stockpile of Minor Lavi Crystals ready.”

  Damn. Though I expected as much. I could ask for extra hunting permits, but they would be worthless until we’ve finished using up the ones we have, and by that time we might be ready to leave the Hub.

  “Tell you what,” Rebecca says. “If you can provide us with a safe method to acquire Stardrops—or relatively safe, all things considered—the council will award you three Minor Lavi Crystals. How does that sound?”

  Ah, clever. She wants to ensure I don’t obtain and abuse a monopoly on Stardrops. Well, that’s fine; I wasn’t going to try that anyway. Sounds like a great way to end up lynched, with Meathead leading the mob, most likely.

  “Very well,” I say at long last. “We have a deal.”

  She smiles and holds out her hand again. I get up and shake it.

  “A pleasure doing business with you, Emma.”

  “Likewise,” I say dryly. Let’s just hope I didn’t just make a deal with the devil.

  “Please report any findings you have to Samuel; we hope to hear from you soon.”

  I nod and turn to leave. “Oh, one more thing,” I say, turning back just before the exit. “I’m entering the temple before I go out into the Moonshade Glade.” Part statement, part test. Let’s see how she reacts when our interests conflict.

  Rebecca frowns, “Well, I suppose that’s your decision to make. Might I ask why you’re in such a hurry to obtain your Qi Pearl?”

  Mmm. That’s a pretty mild reaction.

  I shrug. “My Toxic Energy Tolerance is pretty amazing, but my Tolerance still has a limit. If I explore that glade in earnest, I’m likely to go over it, and I’m not waiting till I’m all better again to get my Yin Qi Pearl. Don’t worry; I’m pretty confident in my ability to make it through.”

  “I see,” Rebecca says. “Very well. Just hand your permit to the enforcer by the temple, and she will provide you with instructions. I’ll confidently await the news of your success.”

  I break the news to the gang as I lead them to the temple.

  “With some luck, we’ll be the first team with Stardrops in the whole Hub,” I finish, grinning widely.

  “Dude, sweet,” Dave says.

  Alec holds a hand out for a high-five, which I provide.

  Kaitlynn frowns and fidgets with her skirt. “That Moonshade Glade sounds really dangerous though, and they said people have gone missing. Are you sure you should be heading in there?”

  I shoot what I hope is a reassuring smile at her. “I won’t lie, it’s risky. However, I’m probably the person most suited to exploring that place, and we need those Stardrops.”

  She sighs. “No, I get it, I just don’t like it.”

  “You’re sweet,” I say. “I’ll be careful, okay? And if I feel like it’s too dangerous, I can always back out of the deal. Anyway, let’s talk about that later; right now, we need to focus on making it through the temple.”

  Dave looks up uncharacteristically shaken. “We? As in... all of us, right now?”

  I nod. “We don’t know what’ll happen in the future. Right now we’re able-bodied and the temple is open to us. I say we go for it.”

  “I agr
ee,” Alec says firmly. “Let’s get this over with.”

  I glance at him appreciatively. Looks like all that Willpower training is paying off.

  Kaitlynn glances at me in worry. “Are you sure you’re ready as well, Emma? I mean, you nearly died in the Second Trial, right?”

  I snort. “Kait, I’m a former gymnast. I went through the Second Trial with a body full of Toxic Energy that brought my Strength down to 6 and my Agility to like 10. Right now, I have a Strength of 10 and an Agility of 12. If I activate Boost Physical, that becomes 13 and 13; none of you even come close. In fact, I bet hardly anyone who’s beaten this thing and succeeded came close to my stats. Heck, I might set a new record.”

  That’s an interesting thought, actually. Suri did mention there were officially kept records that came with substantial rewards if you managed to break them...

  Kaitlynn seems convinced and shoots me a relieved smile.

  “It’s decided, then,” I say, “We’re entering the temple. We’ll discuss the rest later.”

  This time, when we reach the temple doors, Lily is talking to some girl wearing a Captain Marvel shirt.

  I put on my friendliest smile as I stride up and hold out our permits. “Hey Lily. Sorry to interrupt, but we’d like to enter the temple now, please.”

  Miss Marvel turns to shoot me an annoyed look. She’s got long, straight brown hair and a pair of dark-rimmed glasses over her eye and eye-crystal. “Well, you’ll have to wait, my friend is inside right now.”

  “Ehm, yeah, no-one will be able to enter anyway until the doors open again,” Lily confirms apologetically. “But I’ll be with you in a moment to provide instructions in advance.”

  Miss Marvel folds her arms across her chest and shoots me a glare that says as much as, ‘Can you leave now?’

  “All right,” I say holding up my hands as I step back, “we’ll be... over there.”

  Yeesh.

  We take up position a little distance away, already out of hearing range due to this Realm’s wonky physics.