Agastya stared down at the twelve pages of fine parchment. His eyes were tracking the blank line at the bottom of the final sheet. Accepting the tactical reality of his situation, he reached out toward the polished wood of the desk. His fingers closed around a heavy silver fountain pen resting on the brass stand. But just then
"Ah, ah, ah! Stop right there, future corporate asset," Dictor interrupted, stepping forward and playfully snatching the silver pen right out of Agastya's grip. He twirled it through his fingers with a theatrical sigh. "Put the mundane stationery away, baker. We don't use ink here. We use something far more dramatic. Cut your thumb. Let the blood seal it."
Agastya paused, his hand freezing over the desk. His assassin’s conditioning immediately flared with suspicion. In the deep underworld, giving an unknown entity access to your blood was equivalent to handing them a dagger aimed directly at your throat.
Slowly, with agonisingly deliberate motion, he brought his thumb toward his mouth, stopping just as the skin brushed his lower lip. He looked up, his blue eyes narrowing into frozen slits.
"What if I deny it?" he asked, his tone dangerously even.
Dictor chuckled, leaning lazily against the desk. "Well, then you don't get the shiny badge! And Markques might cry because he wasted a perfectly good Splear Core. But seriously, don’t worry. It’s not an imperial death warrant. It’s just a standard biological link. It verifies that the soul inhabiting the vessel is the one binding itself to the terms. If you break the directives or try to defect, the resonance will alert High Command instantly." Dictor flashed a bright, razor-sharp grin. "Until you die, that is."
Agastya let out a soft, controlled breath, masking the rapid calculation running through his mind. "Thanks for the comforting clarification," he murmured dryly.
"Look at the bright side!" Dictor added cheerfully, clapping his hands together. "It’s a two-way thread. Think of it as a morbidly affectionate leash. If your vital signs drop while you're deployed on the other side of the veil, or if you find yourself in mortal peril, the array will pulse. We’ll know your exact location and might just send the cavalry to drag your battered carcass back home."
‘Well, at least there is a tactical advantage,’ Agastya thought, his logical mind overriding his paranoia.
He didn't hesitate a second longer. He pressed his thumb between his teeth and bit down hard. The sharp, metallic tang of hot crimson blood immediately flooded his mouth. Bringing his hand down, he forcefully pressed the blood-slicked pad of his thumb onto the parchment.
Instantly, the contract ignited. An intense, blinding amber light flared from the print. The glowing Sanskrit parameters drink the blood before rapidly fading back into the dry fibres. Dictor reached down, scooped up the finalised documents, and with a swift, magician-like flick of his wrist. He watched the pages slide flawlessly back into the hidden spatial fold of his brass ring.
"Beautiful," Dictor beamed, the brass gears clicking shut. "Welcome to the payroll!"
With the formalities concluded, Agastya and Dictor offered a brief nod of farewell to the exhausted alchemist. They left the heavy scent of rot and crushed herbs behind, stepping back into the quiet, blue-lit corridor. They walked in silence for several minutes, their boots clicking in a synchronised rhythm, until the main passage branched sharply toward the left.
"Chilly, isn't it?" Dictor noted, rubbing his arms. "Spatial engines bleed a lot of heat out of the immediate atmosphere. Keeps the hardware from melting."
Dictor slowed his pace, coming to a halt before a massive door. He pushed it open with a dramatic flourish, gesturing for Agastya to step inside.
The room was a bizarre fusion of magic and industry. Arranged in a strict, uniform line across the stone floor were three heavy iron desks.
Resting on each workstation was a massive, rectangular mechanical apparatus. The devices looked like a heavy industrial combination of a telegraph and a brass clockwork engine. Each one was connected to a bundle of thick, insulated copper wires that snaked down into the darkness beneath the tables, hidden behind heavy velvet curtains.
Dominating the top of each iron chassis was a five-inch glass display screen. Lit from within by a pale blue current, the screens were crowded with frantic, shifting lines of ancient Sanskrit text that Agastya couldn't immediately decipher.
At the far corner of the cramped room, a man dressed in a dark technician's coat was meticulously wiping down a column of wooden shelves mounted to the brickwork.
Dictor’s face lit up. "Spehead, my favourite basement dweller! Greetings and salutations!"
The technician paused, setting his cloth down with a long, profoundly suffering sigh. His exhausted eyes tracked the lively marksman. "Dictor. Must you announce yourself like a brass band? Some of us have migraines."
"Is there no gateway open for today? No inter-dimensional fireworks?" Dictor asked, leaning over one of the desks and peering curiously at the blank glass.
"No, not today," Spehead replied calmly, his voice a low, mechanical monotone that directly contrasted Dictor's bouncing energy. "The threshold is perfectly stable. We have three deployment teams currently active on the other side. They went into all three targeted worlds to complete their extraction missions a few days ago, so we're just keeping the couch warm."
Dictor stepped back, clapping a heavy, enthusiastic hand onto Agastya's shoulder. "Well, meet our freshly baked Awakener! He just walked out of Markques's terrifying laboratory of horrors in one piece. This is Astragan."
‘Astragan,’ Agastya thought, suppressing a sigh. ‘Right. That's my name now.’
The spehead turned his full attention to Agastya, his analytical gaze sweeping over him. "Astragan," the man repeated, offering a stiff, professional nod.
Dictor gave a wide, theatrical bow. "And Astragan, meet the master of ceremonies. He is our ACM caretaker, or as the stuffy high nobles like to call it... an ACM Controller. The man who holds the keys to the universe!"
Agastya and Spehead exchanged a look, mutually sharing a brief, silent moment of exhaustion at Dictor's theatrical antics.
"Nice to meet a new Awakener," Spehead said calmly. "And I suppose I know why you are here."
The technician turned to the shelves behind him. He retrieved a sleek, metallic bracelet and a massive, leather-bound book that looked heavy enough to kill a man with. He walked over and handed the bracelet to Agastya first.
"This is your language translator," Spehead explained. "Keep it on your person when deployed."
Then, he unceremoniously dropped the colossal book into Agastya's waiting hands. Agastya grunted slightly as the sheer weight of it hit his palms. ‘It had to be over a thousand pages thick, its text dense and heavy.’
"And this," Spehead added, completely deadpan, "is the manual. It contains everything you need to know about the ACM, the translated histories, and the operational directives you must follow."
Agastya stared down at the monolithic tome, his stoic assassin facade slipping to reveal genuine, human dread. "You... expect me to memorise all of this?"
Spehead offered a grim, humourless smile. "Only if you want to survive, baker. The universe doesn't care if you skipped chapter fifteen. Please read it carefully."