All Chapters of Foundling: Chapter 61 - Chapter 67

Jealousy, hate, envy, anger, and the other emotions and shadings in between, Hunter experienced. They were stark, comprehensible, invigorating. They fed him and the whisper grew louder. It was not something separate from himself. It was more as if something deep within was welling up, crowding out Hunter’s own thoughts and desires, filling him with . . . hunger, rage.Hunter recognized the erratic, rambling, distorted specter, the cold dispassionate droning, as the rage, suppressing all reason and compassion, that used to overwhelm him before he arrived at the School. He did not need unreason and rage, however. He needed a clear and precise focus, a mind unencumbered. Secreted within that hunger were glimpses of possibilities and insights he had never dreamed of. Accessing those possibilities, however, would mean succumbing to rage and letting the rage rule, but the whispers delivered a seductive message unencumbered by any moral constraints, freeing him to be ruled only

Returning to himself, he knew what he must do. It was only a partial memory, and there were many more, fuzzy and unclear. Things he needed to know. But the beast fought back, concealed them behind a whispering, inchoate drone like that of a beehive. He ignored it and settled into stillness. He tapped the beast’s boundless rage, its hate, its fear, its longing. its loss: his rage, his hate, his fear, his loss, his longing. When had it become like this? When had they become split? Strangely, he found succor with those feelings; a place to brood with the beast away from more nurturing (even to think the word was distasteful) concerns.Hunter shook himself and settled deeper into stillness to purge those distracting affections, but also, willfully, looked to the nurturing love his mother had gifted him. He wanted to give no sustenance to the beast. From the root, cold began to spiral. However, it did not spiral out but in. Cold, blue fire licked across the surface of things, and drew

It was stark and clear as if he lived the moment. But how could he, being but a babe and no more aware of the whole of the world than a newborn could be.It made him angry that such remembrances had been barred from recollection; and there were still more. But that was not a concern he could dwell on. His time was growing short. What was happening within the cell cold not long remain unnoticed by the Master outside.Mind ticked like a clock from moment to memory to emotion. Muscles taught, a spring ready to explode. He had no more time Huner stood as if the shackles at his wrists or the weight of the chains were no account. He stepped forward and the chains, held by the bolt in the floor, snapped tight. He leaned into it, curling his arms forward, getting all the leverage he could.The creeping frost edged beneath the cell door.Hunter relaxed, then surged forward, shocking the metal. It chimed. Rime fell away. Fractures quickened its length, widening into cracks. Iron fragments clatt

Hunter arrived at the Armory. The bow was not there. From Master Philip’s memory, he thought they would be. His calmness and focus made him unemotional. (The Beast snarled.) His emotionlessness, however, did not mean he did not care, and the absence of his bow almost broke that calm, made him indecisive. He could not remain, could not stay, but he would not leave without the bow, and if he stayed to retrieve it, there would be a fight, and in that fight, there would be blood and worse. The decision to be made was obvious, easy, and he took it along with a sheathed rapier.A moving shadow captured no light as it flowed through the corridors from cornices, across walls, along ceilings. Suspicions were not roused at its passage, no mind incited to investigate. It was as if neither he nor they existed outside the bubble of their own presence, and inside shadow, the implacable deadness of his features were hidden.The Beast mocked, whispered: Give in. Be unincumbered by the shallow regard