I hesitate, then comply. The stone is cold and hard. The silence stretches between us, filled only by the drip of water and the faint hum of the wards. I feel like I'm back in his classroom, about to be reprimanded for dozing off.
He doesn't say anything for a long time. He just stares at the scroll, a finger tracing a line of text. I can feel the tension in him, a coiled spring of grief and fury. Finally, he looks up, and his eyes meet mine. They are not accusatory. They are… calculating. Assessing.
"The first time that you used The Gloom...was it on that island?" he asks, his voice quiet but intense.
I nod. "The human-like one had me cornered. He was going to kill me. I just... reacted."
"Describe it," he commands. "Everything. The feeling. The sensation. Not what you did. What it was like to do it."
I close my eyes, trying to call up the memory. It's not difficult. It's burned into my soul. "It was... cold. And heavy. Like reaching into a pool of oil, but the oil was... alive. I could feel its hunger. Its anger. But it was... scared of me. Or maybe respectful. When I commanded it, it obeyed without question. Like it recognized me as its... master."
I open my eyes. Thomson's face is a mask of intense concentration, but he does not seem repulsed.
"Master," he repeats the word, as if tasting it. "An interesting choice." He taps a finger on the scroll. "The oldest texts, the ones most scholars dismiss as myth, they have theories of the nature of The Gloom. Theories of where it came from - that it might be the natural answer to our light. That it might be created by the hatred and depression of humans. That it's the foundational material of the universe."
I frown, watching him.
Some of what he's said sounds familiar. I think I've heard those theories in passing, at least.
His eyes turn to me. "But none of them...nothing that I have ever heard of, has ever suggested a human can touch The Gloom without harm. Much less control it. It is inseparable from the nature of being a Gloom Dweller. The two are one and the same."
"I'm not a Gloom Dweller." I say, more defensively than I meant to.
"I am aware of that," Thomson says calmly. "But your bloodline...your mother was an anomaly herself. Her power was to manipulate light, not just to create it. She could bend it, shape it, turn it into a weapon. She is one of the few exorcists in all of recorded history to have ever successfully slain a Noble-class Dweller in single combat."
He pauses.
"Perhaps the taint of your father's humanity didn't diminish her power. Perhaps it...changed it. Twisted it into something new."
"....You think Tainted Blood is somehow tied to Gloom Dwellers?"
He shakes his head. "No. Tainted Blood..." He sighs and sits back with a frown. "Exorcist blood functions only when completely pure. The blessing given to ancient Exorcists is too narrow. Tainted Blood is nothing more than a human. And humans are devoured by The Gloom. They do not control it."
He says, more to himself than to me.
"It is the one thing about your mother I never understood. Why she would betray her line. Her power."
My hands clench. "She didn't betray anyone. She was in love." My mother is not a topic I discuss with anyone
It's not like I remember her. She died giving birth to me. But it's something I've always had to carry. The idea she was some sort of traitor.
Thomson's expression softens almost imperceptibly. "Perhaps. But love does not explain...this." He gestures to me, to my hands. "I wish that she were here now. Perhaps she could have an answer for this."
"You don't think my father might have answers?"
It's a bitter, instinctive comment.
I don't even know if I mean it.
After all, that deadbeat, whoever he was, just abandoned me, too. It's not like I have any connection to him. But I've been dragged down and excluded, looked down upon all these years because of my relation to him.
And so...I can't help but say it.
It's not like I was born from just a mother. My father's blood is half of me.
So...
I can't help but challenge Thomson's focus, can I?
Thomson looks at me, and I see a flash of...pity.
"He isn't here either. Is he?" He says. "Even if I wished to ask him, he is long gone."
My hands clench on my knees and I look away from him.
...I don't really have an answer, because I didn't think through my comment in the first place. I'm getting far too impulsive. Too reactive.
Thomson is the one to break the silence. "...I didn't know him well, but I did meet him once. A quiet, intense sort of man. He wasn't like the rest of us. He wasn't an exorcist."
My head snaps back toward him. I have never heard anything about my father before. No one has ever told me anything.
And this entire time...
"You knew him?"
"Know...is a stretch." Thomson shakes his head. "I have little interest in humans, beyond ensuring they survive as is my duty. Less to a man who dirtied the blood of our greatest exorcist."
...I don't need to listen to any of this. I can just. Go back to sleep.
Before I stand up, he continues. "But I do recall our meeting, short though it was. You look rather more like him than your mother. You have his eyes."
He stands up and walks over to the wall, picking up a candle and relighting it. "Your mother was the Light. Your father was....quiet. He said very little, and emoted even less, while I visited. He didn't seem to even care when I argued with her over her decision. He was just...there." Thomson seems to be thinking. "It was the silence that I remember most. He never raised his voice. He never tried to defend himself. He let her fight all the battles for him."
A bitter taste fills my mouth. I've always resented my father, whoever he was, for leaving me. For the Tainted Blood that has defined my entire existence. But hearing this... this detached, passive description... it's somehow worse.
"A coward," I spit out, the word tasting like ash.
"Perhaps," Thomson says, turning back from the wall, the candlelight making his face a harsh mask of shadow. "Your mother, however, found him fascinating. She told me once that it was like looking at a deep, still pool. She said there were currents running far beneath the surface that no one could see but her." He sets the candle back down on the table, its light making the glyph on its surface glitter.
"Why are you telling me this?" I ask, my voice tight.
"Because I am trying to understand you, Caden." He sits back down, leaning forward, his hands clasped on the stone table. His gaze is intense, piercing through the gloom, pinning me in place.
"You're asking the wrong person. I don't understand myself." My own frustration is a raw, open wound.
"Perhaps not." Thomson sighs, and holds up the glyph. "All we have left, then, is this."