7 in 3

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Coil

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Contrary to my typical self, I’m nervous. Very nervous. So nervous that the shadows making up my clothes are shaking slightly. Father tried to get me to wear actual clothes, but these give me confidence. And I really need all that I can get right now. 

My plan is to go out, briefly introduce myself, and then explain what the announcement is. Then Emerald and Sea come out, and I introduce them. Quick and easy. Not scary at all. Only a few hundred people present.

I feel the shadow under my shoes move, and a lumpy humanoid slowly rises out of it. Crag looks me over with their typical blank expression.

“You’ll do good, Father.” They give me the faintest smile. I can’t help but frown.

“I’ve told you not to call me that, Crag.” My tone sounds more irritated than I actually am, probably due to nerves. 

The large figure nods, totally unphased by my tone. “I know.” Their quiet voice betrays no feeling, but they come off as smug all the same. “Good luck, Father.” Before I can protest their word choice they rapidly melt into my shadow. 

Damn thing, it’s been so… free spirited lately. Maybe it's due to being used long term. I could test it and remake it… but that would be a waste of its experience. I hear a terse knock on the door. 

“Let’s go.” Father’s noble voice is so cold, and easily cuts through the wooden door. I walk over and pull it open. Father looks me over. “You look good enough, time to shine…” Father looks at me like he wants to say more, but decides against it. 

He leads me out to a stone stage that’s raised a few feet above the streetlevel. The decently sized plaza is in the center level of the tiers and is where one of the main vertical passages are. The cobblestone paths twist around the plaza in a cylindrical spiral upwards. This is one of the only places in town where you can go from the bottom level to the top directly. 

The plaza is full of people. Most seem to be commoners, but there are a few aristocrats mixed in. The wealthier folk are bunched together in little groups inside the crowd. The expression of some in the plaza is curiosity, but I notice other people are very… disgruntled looking. That’s not including the expected drunkards. 

Father steps up to a pedestal in the center of the platform and activates a small fuzzy device. The device gives off a gentle glow from inside of the felt-like fabric it’s encased in. 

“Hello Citizens.” He makes a gesture of looking over the whole crowd. “Thank you for being here today, there’s an important announcement to be made!” It’s unthinkable people wouldn’t show up, Father is well liked by the people. “However, I will not be the one giving it.” I see a few onlookers seem shocked, and a few scowls drift in the crowd as well. Father gestures behind himself, pointing at me. “Today my son, Coil, will be speaking. Please give him your warm welcomes, as you would for me.” 

Father steps back from the pedestal and walks past me, he gives me a hard pat on the back which knocks me forward. I stumble into the pedestal with an oof. To my horror Father left the device on, so my oof is broadcasted into the entire area. 

I can feel my face go red as the people in the audience hold in their laughter. They wouldn’t laugh at a noble, not publicly at least.

With a small cough, I begin. “Greetings, I am Coil Holdings, as my father said.” Good good, you remembered your own name. Keep going! “Today’s pressing matter is that our wonderful town is going to be welcoming two new ambassadors today” The crowd murmurs some, so I give them a few seconds. “They’re not skilled diplomats, but their knowledge of other races is the highest amongst their people.” Alright, now the hard part. “That brings me to the real meat and potatoes.” …What the hell is that?! Potatoes? The crowd looks just as confused as I am, so I just push through. “Our two new guests, who belong to a newly discovered race.” 

That took the crowd’s attention away from my flub instantly. They don’t even try to be quiet and begin chattering to one another. I give them about a minute before continuing. “Their race is called the Unraks, and they are very intelligent people. I’d like to introduce the two of them now.” I make sure my volume is enough to cover their talking. A loud snap heralds the opening of a hidden trap door in the stage. The two unraks clumsily climb out of the hole, not waiting for the wooden elevator to bring them up. They quickly move over to me, electing to slither on their limbs instead of doing the spider type walking. Probably a good call.

For the first time I see their mostly translucent shells in the day-lights. The light goes straight through, no shadows of innards are visible inside. They are tinged with just a hint of color, otherwise looking like clear quartz. Emerald is the one who steps forward, hiding her timid spouse behind her. The green hue to her body glints beautifully. 

I pick up the fuzzy device and flick a switch on the side. The light shining from within it flashes twice before going back to a steady shine. I hand the device to Emerald, who wraps one of her tentacles around it. She pulls it up to her body and starts to speak.

Her clicks and flashes are of course not understandable to the crowd, but she makes them anyway. For a few moments the people look at each other, confused. Then a woman’s voice fills the space.

The voice is stiff, but understandable. “Hello… new friends. I am Emerald and this…” Emerald motions to Sea who is hiding behind her. “Is my… mate, Sea. We are from our mountain, and are… close friends with the… Count’s children. We may be strange to you all but we… hope we can get to know one another.” The strange voice pauses randomly, and the crowd quietly listens. So much for an instant translation spell.

Emerald hands the translator back to me, and I flick it back to just projecting my voice. “Thank you everyone for being here to meet our new friends. Remember that they are close friends of the Count’s family, and you should all treat them as such.” I turn off the device and place it on the stand. The crowd politely claps as the Unraks make their exit. 

A voice cuts through my mind, panicked beyond belief. Father! Mage on the upper ramp, aiming for Emerald. I can’t inter- I jump to the side, blocking Emerald off from the twisted stone incline. Sure enough I see a flash of a spell being fired. A spear of ice flies towards me, or more accurately Emerald. A large hand of shadow erupts out from beneath my feet and catches the overgrown icicle. With a glare I crush the ice magic. The distant mage has a panicked expression on their face, and turns and runs. 

Whoever is nearest to that mage, intercept. Thousands of black dots fire from beneath my shoes, shooting across the ground and walls in every direction. Confident in my agents’ ability to catch a cryomancer, I dismiss my shadow arm. I turn back to the crowd, who are all staring at me. The fear in their eyes causes me to feel a pang in my stomach. 

I turn and run back inside the building. 

 

【〓〓〓〓】

 

I don’t stop running. Keep going, through the prep building. Past Father, past our carriage. I just keep going. Eventually, when I can’t run anymore, I find myself in front of the manor. 

Passing the knights at the front gates I stagger into the building. I ignore the offers of help from the maids and crawl into my room. Father has given us each our own room, so we don’t have to share one anymore. They even have doors that go between them without going into the hallway. 

I drop into my armchair, drenched in sweat. I’m not a physical person. Gasp after gasp comes out of me, even long after I catch my breath. The door to my room creaks open slowly. I try to tell whoever it is to leave, but I can’t stop gasping long enough. 

Warm limbs wrap themselves around me, and I feel myself pulled into a hug. Sea holds me against their rough but glassy shell. Their body is surprisingly warm, I’m not sure why I expected otherwise. Slowly my breathing stabilizes. 

The arms retract from around me, but Sea places themself in my lap. I look down at them and raise an eyebrow. “What?” They don’t do anything, they just sit in my lap.

After an undetermined amount of time, Sea slips off my lap and walks off into the hall with a wave. They softly shut the door behind them. 

The second the door shuts, Crag materializes from the shadow behind it. They rush over to me and kneel. 

“Are you alright Father?” Their wide eyes scan my body for injury. I just shake my head, too exhausted to speak. “I’m sorry, Father. I didn’t get to the mage in time, and so you had to exert yourself like this.” What is this guy on about, I’m like this because I ran home. 

I just shake my head again. “Crag, you did good.” Crags face tells me they don’t believe me. “If you hadn’t warned me I wouldn’t have been able to block that ice spear, and Emerald would probably be dead.” Their eyes narrow a bit before looking down at their hands. Their fingers are all random thicknesses and lengths, I’m amazed they do the work they do with those. “I also didn’t exert myself.” They look up at me again, shocked.

“Then why were you panting like that?”

I chuckle. “Because I ran all the way home.”

They make a confused expression. “Why did you do that?” 

With a smile I say. “Because… well…” …Why did I run? It was after the crowd was scared of me. Yes, that's it. “I didn’t want to scare the people any more, so I left as fast as I could.” That’s the only thing that makes sense. 

Crag frowns before hugging my leg. I stare in shock at the shadowthing. “Please be more careful, Father.” They sound like they’re… crying?

“Alright, Crag, alright.”

 

】〓〓〓〓【

Crag

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Father overexerted himself, again. He never values himself. I know he doesn’t understand our affection for him, but he should still care for himself. Since Father won’t look after himself, I must.

I phase into existence in a large room encased in stone. There’s no lights or entrances of any kind. One of the scout shades found this room in the center of the noble tier. There were signs of it being a safe room of some kind, with teleport circles and food supplies. Unfortunately whoever made this room didn’t think about air. We had to clean up two well dressed corpses from the beds in the corner.

The room is perfect for our purposes. Cut off from the outside and only accessible through our shadow walking. This is where we will make a way to help Father.

Our first dilemma when thinking of how to help Father is our lack of numbers. Father made nearly fifty of us, but it’s not enough to cover the entire town and take care of things so Father doesn’t have to bother. So that is our first goal. 

We want more numbers, but making us is very draining on Father. Our solution, we make more of us on our own. 

So far we haven’t been successful. We’ve managed to create the shaderats and shadecrows, but not a full agent shade. The problem is when we create a shade creature, it consumes a portion of our own bodies. The larger the creature, the more of us it takes. So we can’t make another agent, because that would take all of our body. 

Several agents fill the large space, each attempting different methods to get around the problem. They’ve been dedicated to this task since we started, and I think being in this enclosed space chopping parts of themselves off is getting to them. I walk to the closest shade.

The shade’s name is Creek, one of our few female shades. She’s also currently two feet tall. The miniscule shade looks up at me with a smile on her face.

“Hi Oldie!” She waves up at me. “What brings you here?” She animatedly tilts her head. 

I sigh. “Creek, I came to check on you all. Why are you so short?” I give her a stern look. 

If she noticed my look she doesn’t care. “Oh! Oldest, I’ve made such fun friends! Let me introduce you!” The space around her starts to vibrate as thousands of coin sized insects apparate into existence. The small shade looks proudly at her creations, who swarm her like a coat. 

“Creek, we’re trying to make self aware agents, not swarms of mindless insects.” I can’t help but scold the younger agent.

She puffs out her cheeks in a pout. “But they are smart! Just… not smart enough.” I raise an eyebrow, interested.

“How smart are they, Creek?” She smiles at my curiosity.

“They’re smarter than the human’s dogs! But below our desired levels.” She deflates at the end of her sentence. 

I nod, that’s not that bad actually. They should be easy to train. “Good work Creek.” I crouch down and pet her on the head. “Don’t expend so much of yourself at once again, you’re off duty until you’re full size.” I make my words harsh and uncompromising. As I move to the next agent I hear Creek whining into the void.

The next agent is actually the fourth one Father ever made. He was the first to speak up to everyone about his worries over Father. His current size is a foot shorter than normal, and he’s fiddling with something on a large table. 

“Quarry, how goes your efforts?” Quarry jumps in place. I hold back a chuckle. He’s the only shade I’ve met so far that can be snuck up on. 

“W-well, Eldest. Not well.” He frowns sadly. With a wave of his arm he shows me the contents of the table.

On it lies a large… mess. A tangle of shadow limbs and flesh. Nothing matches anything else. I raise an eyebrow at Quarry. 

He looks down sheepishly. “I was trying to circumvent the problem of using too much mass by continually adding small amounts to an already created shade.” I nod, it’s an alright idea. “Unfortunately, the more shadow I added over time, the less stable the thing got and the less responsive.” To demonstrate he slaps one of the poor things' legs. It doesn’t even flinch. 

I pat him on the back. “It’s alright Quarry, not every idea works. Just scrap this and move to your next theory.” I go to walk away, but pause. “Quarry, do make sure to kill that poor thing. Properly.” This time I actually leave.

I walk up to the last shade. Another female named Forest. Unlike the other two, she’s currently fully sized, and mumbling to herself. I cautiously step up to her, somewhat worried about her frame of mind. The other two aren’t the most stable either.

“Hello, First. What brings you here?” She speaks without looking up from some papers. 

“Forest, I’m here to hear about any progress you might’ve made.” She goes stiff at my words. What’s wrong? 

She fiddles with the papers in her hands nervously. Her voice sounds almost afraid as she speaks. “First, before I attempt my experiment, can I have your word on something?” I go wide-eyed at her request. 

“Well, let's hear it.” She nods solemnly at my response.

Her voice shakes a bit. “No matter what happens, give me responsibility over the result of my attempt.” I nod easily. That’s not a problem, she could teach the next agent how to use the technique if it succeeds, and if it fails then she can keep the mistake. 

Her eyes twinkle in happiness at my answer. You’d think I just gave her her every dream. She rushes to the open area of her workspace and sits down. I walk over to watch, curious about her idea.

Forest holds her arms out in front of her and lets shadow slowly leak from her palms. The ropes of ink collect in an orb floating in front of her. Over time more and more leaks out of her, and she gets shorter. Once she’s about a full head shorter, she stops giving the object more shadow.

The thing is a blob a little larger than her head. I’m not sure how this could possibly create an agent. Slowly, features start to form from the lumpy shape. Arms, legs, a head. They appear one after another, until the creature is finished. 

With a light thud, the thing falls into Forest’s arms. Then it starts screaming. Loudly. Forest holds the baby up to herself and shushes it gently. Eventually the horrid noise stops and I can ask Forest what the hell she just did, but before I can she looks up at me with watery eyes.

“First… I did it!”