Bryan's Arc

Chapter 7 of 21

Morning light cut across the desk. Bryan rubbed his eyes and lifted the model again. The glow on the red armor held, but something was off at the edges. The light didn't bleed the way real fire bled. It sat on top of the paint instead of inside it. He stared at it for a long time. He needed another set of eyes. Someone who knew this exact problem and could point at the fix. He drove to a local painter's studio he'd heard about in the Discord. Inside, a glass case held three armored figures, each lit from within by green and orange crystal light. The work was clean. Alive. The painter took one look at Bryan's model and tapped the edge of the shoulder. "You're glazing on top. You need a thin pigment underneath, then the highlight. I'll show you. But I want your shoulder pad recipe in trade." Bryan's stomach tightened. That recipe was the wound effect, the risk that made the piece his. He swallowed and nodded. He wrote it down on a scrap of paper and slid it across. The painter mixed a small dish and handed him the brush. Bryan touched it to the armor. The glow sank in. It looked alive. He had the fix. He had also just handed away the thing that made him different. The painter studied the recipe, then pinned it to a corkboard above the bench. Next to it hung a printed sketch of a red, veined heart, labeled in small handwriting. Price of admission. Bryan stared at it. Other scraps of paper crowded around the heart, each one a trade from another painter. He drove home with the fix in his hands and a hollow place behind his ribs. The armor would glow now. But by the next show, his wound effect would be on someone else's model too. At his desk, Bryan worked the new layer into the armor. The red breathed under the lamp, lit from inside the way he'd chased for months. He set the brush down and smiled, just for a second. Then his phone buzzed. A post in the Discord. A photo of a fresh shoulder pad, pooling pigment, raw and wet. The caption read, new technique, tell me what you think. Bryan stared at the screen. The trade had already moved. He turned the phone face down and picked the brush up again. He had the glow now. He would need something new by morning.