Elias woke with his head splitting open.
The sky above him was not his ceiling. The grass beneath him was not his bed. The light slanting from above was afternoon light, golden and heavy, and he had no memory of how he had gotten here.
Images flickered behind his eyes. A lizard the size of a mountain, its hide armored with stone. A bird wreathed in lightning, its wings blotting out the sun. The ground splitting open. Lava erupting. Thunder cracking the sky.
A boy, standing at the edge of a ridge, watching gods collide.
Elias pressed his palm to his forehead. The images faded, but the ache remained.
"Ugh, my head... this is the second time I've dreamt about that boy. Is this going to become like some series I watch every time I fall asleep?"
He did not understand why the dreams felt less like dreams and more like memories.
"Whose, though?"
With a grunt, he sat up slowly.
Something wet trickled from his nose. He touched his fingers to his upper lip and they came away red.
Blood.
He wiped it on the sleeve of his shirt.
"You're awake."
Elias looked up.
Ortis casually stood a few feet away with his back to him. To Elias's relief, he was clothed, with his hands in the pockets of his jacket. The afternoon light caught the edges of his silhouette, turning him into something that might have been a statue.
"For a moment there," Ortis said, his voice light, almost conversational, "I was worried you'd become a vegetable. Or entered a coma. It would be very inconvenient, that. I'd have to explain the circumstances that led to you becoming like that. Also, I'd advise you watch your diet. You're heavier than you look."
Elias's mind began to move. He calculated: the space was unfamiliar. The light came from the wrong direction—west, which meant afternoon, which meant he had been unconscious for a few hours. He looked past Ortis's silhouette at the trees beyond. The topography was wrong. The forest around the hill they were on was a different growth from what he was used to. He had explored the forests around Blackhaven with Jamie. He knew the paths, landmarks, and hidden routes.
He did not recognize any of this.
"We're far from the city," Elias said. It was not a question.
Ortis did not turn around. "Observant."
"How far?"
"Far enough."
Elias rose to his feet and looked up.
Ortis was bent over him, his face inches from Elias's own.
Elias flinched and fell back down.
"Don't scare me like that," Elias said, one hand on his temple and the other on his chest.
He had not heard Ortis move. Had not felt the displacement of air, the shift in pressure, the subtle cues that told a person someone was approaching. Ortis had simply been looking over the trees, and then he had been here, and there was no space between those two states where movement had occurred.
Ortis's eyes narrowed. He studied Elias's face with the intensity of a man examining a puzzle he had not yet solved.
"What are you?" he asked.
Elias held his gaze. "What am I? What did you do to me? The last thing I remember is I was at home, and the next thing I'm here," he said, keeping his voice steady.
He touched his temple. The migraine pulsed beneath his fingers, a dull, insistent throb.
Ortis straightened. He did not apologize. He did not explain. He simply said, "That was my presence."
Elias waited.
Ortis sighed—a long, theatrical exhale, as if he had been asked to explain something obvious to a child who should have understood it already. Which, Elias supposed, he was. A child. In body, at least.
"I heard you were done in by an apex beast a while back," Ortis said.
"The Sapphire Salamander, was it?"
Elias's jaw tightened.
"Yes. And?"
"How did it feel?"
Elias considered the question, folding his arms and rubbing his chin.
"Being impaled through the heart," he said, keeping his voice flat, "is quite the experience. Have you ever thought of getting skewered? I highly recommend it. Very pleasant. I hear it's good for the lungs too."
Ortis's eyebrow rose. His lips twitched—not quite a smile, but something close.
"That's not what I meant." He waved a hand, as if swatting away Elias's sarcasm. "How did you feel around the beast? Before it attacked. During. Did you feel something? A pressure? An aura?"
Elias thought back. "Now that I think about it, there was something," he said, now actually considering it. "A... weight. Like the air was pressing down on me."
Ortis nodded. "That's presence."
Elias waited. Ortis did not elaborate.
"Presence..." Elias repeated.
"The higher you go on the Ladder of Ascension, the more powerful your presence becomes. It's a manifestation of the soul's weight. Your father is a Saint. Your mother is a Praetorian." He paused. "They have presence, too. They just know how to hold it in."
Elias noticed the way Ortis's eye twitched when he mentioned Alaric. The way his lips curved—just slightly—when he mentioned Elara. He filed both observations away.
"I've never felt anything like that from them."
"Because, as I said, they can hold it in. Compress it. Keep it from leaking out and crushing everyone around them." Ortis shrugged. "Though they'd need to expel it from time to time. Pressure builds. Even Saints have limits. It's very similar to shitting. It's something you have to do, and at times you have to hold it in, but at the end of the day you need to let it out.... What's with that face?"
"Nothing," Elias said while making no attempt to hide the judgment on his face.
"You sure you don't need to shi—"
"OK, moving on."
Ortis's expression did not change. He simply shrugged and continued.
"Paragons are different." He said it casually, as if discussing the weather. "At our stage, our souls have grown so heavy that the world itself rejects us. Normally, we'd operate on the Astral Plane—" He noticed Elias raise an eyebrow. "The space I showed you all at dinner yesterday." He waved his hand dismissively.
Elias opened his mouth to ask a question. Ortis held up a hand.
"In layman's terms," he eyed Elias, "the Astral Plane is where 'Notions' are formed. Where souls are visible. Where a Paragon's presence doesn't crush everything around them because there's nothing physical to crush." He lowered his hand. "The problem is, we are still part of this plane and still need to interact with this side of existence. And when we do, our presence makes things... difficult."
"Difficult," Elias repeated.
"Bending space, laws, time et cetera, et cetera. Causing maidens to faint with aura alone. That sort of thing." Ortis adjusted the collar of his jacket. A small gesture. Almost unconscious. "That's why Paragons have anchors. Objects that absorb excess presence. Dampen it. Keep our weight from affecting the world too much."
Elias's gaze dropped to the jacket. The jacket Ortis always wore. The jacket he never took off.
He looked back up.
"The keep," he said. "When I opened your door. You were in the bath. Your jacket was off. Your anchor was off. Why didn't your presence destroy everything?"
Ortis looked at him for a long moment.
"OK, first of all, yeah," he said, "it's rude to peep at people when they're bathing."
Elias's expression did not change.
"Yes, I have an impressive wang, but it's not for display to random children. Only the girls can see it. And by girls, I mean my darling wife."
Elias shuddered. He could not help it. The image would not leave his mind.
Ortis laughed—a short, sharp sound. "Secondly, I expanded a Zone. That keeps the pressure contained so I don't blow shit up when I'm doing something as simple as changing clothes."
Elias's brow furrowed.
"Don't worsen the migraine you definitely got when I brought you here by thinking about it, kid." Ortis's voice was light. "Just know that I don't need to be dressed to be dangerous."
Elias was quiet for a moment.
He thought about the pressure. The weight. The feeling of being at the bottom of the ocean, of being crushed by something he could not see or touch or fight. He thought about the black flash, the darkness, the silence.
Then he thought about the boy on the ridge. The beasts colliding. The world being remade.
His head throbbed, and he decided to take his uncle's advice.
"Your turn," Ortis said.
Elias looked up.
Ortis was pointing at him. His finger was steady. His eyes were sharp.
"What are you?"