Windsom Indrath
In my Limitless Physique—my black feline aspect, sleek and silent as a shadow—I walked the halls of the Eraliths' palace. Each step was soundless, deliberate, my claws retracted, my tail low.
A certain feeling of disgust lingered in my core, a familiar contempt that had been festering for centuries. For a being like me, accustomed to the unmatched grandeur of the Indrath Clan's seat of power atop Mount Geolus, this elven palace was a shack.
More primitive than even the home of the most frugal of Pantheons in the Cerulean Savanna. The stone was rough, the carvings crude, the proportions all wrong.
Corvis Eralith had been urgently carried to the infirmary wing of this palace after he was injured in a fight. If only Selene 17 were not a failed Guardian Bear, unable to withstand the damage dealt to her bond, I would not be in this sickening place today.
I would not be forced to debase myself by skulking through the halls of lesser architecture, in the most humble of an Asura's physiques. But the creature had been one of Wren Kain IV's failures, discarded and abandoned in Dicathen for that very reason.
And the fact that I could not let Corvis Eralith die annoyed me even more. The lesser was far too useful a pawn to Epheotus by now.
Finn Warend was doing optimal work in Darv, and the elf being of lesser royalty—however insignificant—helped greatly in my project. His position, his influence, his ability to move between kingdoms without raising suspicion, all of it was valuable.
Letting him die would only slow down my ascent through the ranks of the Heaven's Host. I had spent decades maneuvering for position, currying favor, proving my worth to Lord Indrath. I would not let a mere lesser's recklessness undo all of that.
I jumped through an open window, landing on a windowsill close to the room where Corvis Eralith lay.
The Dicathian sun reflected off the white stone of the elven palace, warm and golden, but it brought me no comfort. This world's sun was a pale imitation of the light that bathed Epheotus. I made another jump, landing on a branch of a Watchful Willow.
These trees, alongside their other similes, were the only things in the Old World that exuded Asuran magnificence. Their ancient boughs, their mana-rich bark, their silent, patient sentinel—they were fragments of home scattered across a dirty land.
That was the only reason the Elshire Forest still existed, the only reason Lord Indrath had never ordered its destruction. It was a piece of Epheotus, and as such, the Lord Protector of the Great Eight safeguarded and guaranteed its continuation.
Unless Lord Indrath decided otherwise, of course. His wisdom was such that he was always ready to sacrifice.
From the branch, I reached another windowsill. Through the glass, I saw the elf. There were other lessers in the room: the current king and queen, the former king, one of the Lances, and another lesser, a healer by the look of her.
"His Highness still has his mana signature, Your Majesty," the elven woman said. "He is alive."
"He is not breathing, Alanis!" The elven king's voice cracked. "How can he be alive?!"
"Your Majesty, I repeat myself: when a mage dies, the first thing that leaves their body is their mana signature, followed by the collapse of their mana core. His Highness has gone through neither."
"Alduin," the elven queen said, her voice soft but steady. "Trust Alanis. Corvis will be fine."
"Listen to your wi—" the older elf began, but the king cut him off.
"Don't talk to me, Father." The king's voice was ice, sharp and cold. "You are meant to be watching over Tessia and Corvis, and yet every time they get themselves into something dangerous, you let them."
"I am letting them grow up, Alduin." The old elf's voice was weary, worn. "I am letting them have the freedom they need."
"And Corvis could die now!"
How annoying. The bickering of lessers, their petty squabbles, their desperate, clinging love for each other. It was beneath me. Perhaps I should show myself in front of them and be done with it.
Give them the Shomukta—the Tear of the Mother, the Mourning Pearl—that I had brought for Corvis Eralith. It was an investment, using such a precious thing on a lesser.
With it, I would not need to worry about Corvis Eralith breaking himself with the use of Selene 17's Beast Will.
I waited for the lessers to leave. I was not allowed to reveal myself in front of them. Corvis Eralith was an exception due to his oddities—how the Djinnic ruins behaved around him, how his very presence seemed to wake things that should have slept forever.
When they finally left, I jumped onto the bed hosting Corvis Eralith. I used my aether arts of Spatium to summon the Shomukta. The pearl appeared in a fold of space, iridescent and glowing, the size of my paw, its surface swirling with colors like the sea at dawn.
I shoved it inside Corvis Eralith's mouth, feeling it slide past his lips, his teeth, his throat. Then I left, leaping back to the windowsill, back to the branch, back to the shadows.
When his body metabolized the pearl, whatever ailment was killing him would be healed. Not his missing hand, unfortunately. The flesh was gone, the bone severed, the nerves burned away.
Not even a Mourning Pearl could restore what had been lost.
Corvis Eralith
I opened my eyes to a dome of golden threads. Fate, in all their infinite, incomprehensible glory, turned and turned above me as I lay on the warm sand of The Atoll: the checkpoint in the middle of the river and all its possibly infinite sections.
The threads moved in patterns I could not follow, loops within loops, futures folding into pasts and back again, and I watched them for a moment, letting the liminality of this place wash over me.
I stood up, brushing sand from my arms, my legs, my chest. The grains fell away like dust, weightless, and I looked down at the waves crashing against the shore.
The water was clear, impossibly clear, and in its surface, I saw my reflection—Eralith Asclepius. The Soul-Body that had been waiting for me in this place, the vessel that Fate had prepared before I was even born.
His face stared back at me, and I stared back at him.
Phantom pain tore at my right hand. The agony was excruciating, white-hot, spreading up my arm like fire.
In my Soul-Body, the hand was perfectly healthy, fingers whole, skin unbroken, the bones intact. But when I tried to move even a single finger, the pain flared, and I understood.
Massbinding. REmould. The Articles of Peace. They had been a deadly combination. I had pushed too hard, tried to weave too much power into too small a space, and my body had paid the price.
I need to get back now, I decided, turning my head to search for the Petaldrift that would carry me back to Dicathen. The boat was where I always found it, pulled up on the sand, its wooden paddle resting across the seat.
I walked toward it, my bare feet leaving prints in the wet sand, and took the paddle in my left hand.
The last thing I remembered was Alea coming to save us, guided to Azellio by Soleil, presumably. The Lance had descended from the sky like a storm of roses, her Courtblade flashing, her magic overwhelming.
With her there, I did not need to worry about Tessia or Berna. Nylith and her Chimera were strong, but a white core mage was on a whole other level. Alea was one of Dicathen's strongest. She was the best chance we had at defeating the Caduchicil once and for all.
With that thought anchoring me, I pushed the Petaldrift into the water and climbed aboard. I did not sail toward the Warworn Rapids.
I sailed toward the Truce-Waters, the peaceful currents shaped by the Insight of the Djinnic civilization. The segment of the river that would allow me to return without turning back, without losing the progress I had made.
—
I woke up in a sunlit room.
The ceiling above me was familiar—warm wood, carved beams, the faint scent of varnish and age. I was lying on a bed in a room that was not my own, but that was undeniably in the Royal Palace.
The Royal Hospital? Yes. The wing that served as a general hospital for the people of the Queen's Grove, where almost all of Elenoir's nobility brought their scions when they were injured or ill.
I stared up at the beams, counting them, letting my thoughts settle. I felt good. Too good, perhaps. The effects of the Truce-Waters were still strong in my system, a dozen times more potent than even Inner Current.
As powerful as the strongest analgesic from Earth, numbing pain, smoothing fear, making everything feel distant and manageable.
So if I had suffered lasting damage, I did not feel it right now.
I turned my head, scanning the room. No one was there. It was deep in the night, the windows dark, the only light coming from a single candle on a bedside table. How long had it been since I died? Hours? Days? I did not know.
A familiar chirp broke the silence. Beak tapping on glass. A robin was using her beak to try to open the window, struggling against the latch.
After a moment of effort, Soleil managed to lift the window a crack—just enough to slip her head beneath—and pushed it up. She flew inside urgently, her wings flapping, her small body trembling.
"Milord!" she chirped, hopping onto my bed, shaking with agitation. "You are awake!"
"Soleil, calm down," I said, my voice coming out smooth as honey, dreamy and distant. "I am totally fine."
"You call that fine, milord?!" Her voice rose, nearly a screech. "You lost a hand!"
I blinked. The words did not quite land. I raised my right arm, turning it over in the candlelight.
The hand was gone.
The stump ended just below the wrist, wrapped in clean white bandages that showed no sign of bleeding. Someone had amputated it—cleanly, professionally—to avoid infection or necrosis or whatever other complications might have followed from the damage I had done to myself.
"Oh," I said.
The Truce-Waters' calming effect was perhaps a bit too strong. But as I stared at the missing hand, turning the stump this way and that, I found myself thinking not of loss, but of opportunity.
I lived in a world of magic. I had the help of an Asura like Soleil. I had access to the knowledge of Avicenna, a Sage of Djinnkind. A missing hand was not going to be a problem.
And beyond that, it was an excuse. An excuse to bring the knowledge of artificial limbs to Dicathen. Prosthetics that could restore function, that could return dignity to those who had lost parts of themselves.
This discovery would also help the dwarves greatly—many miners lost limbs in cave-ins and accidents. If I could solve that problem, if I could give them back their hands, their arms, their legs—
Damn. The Truce-Waters really were powerful. If I were not under their effect right now, I would be panicking. I would be staring at the stump of my wrist, feeling the absence of fingers that had been with me my entire life, and I would be drowning.
But instead, I was thinking about politics. About engineering. About helping my people. About the future.
"What about Nylith?" I asked, forcing my attention back to the present. "Did Alea catch her?"
Soleil's feathers drooped. "...No, milord."
Of course not. That woman had a talent for escape. She had fled from the Colour Timberland, and now she had fled from Azellio, slipping through Alea's fhold like smoke.
I felt a flicker of annoyance, tiny and distant, barely there, but the Truce-Waters smoothed it away.
"What about Tessia?" I asked. "Is she alright?"
"She is," Soleil confirmed.
I closed my eyes, reaching through the bond to find Berna. She was close, somewhere in the palace, probably curled up outside my door, refusing to leave. The warmth of her presence washed over me, steady and reassuring.
And then I felt it. My mana core. It was silver. I had reached the silver stage—a level that had taken my grandfather decades to achieve. How? I had not trained for this, had not pushed my core to its limits, had not earned this advancement.
"Soleil," I said, opening my eyes. "Did you do something to my core?"
She shook her robin head. "Windsom Indrath," she explained. "He came here. He gave you a special kind of Asuran elixir."
"A Mourning Pearl?" I asked, the name surfacing from my memory of the novel.
Soleil nodded.
I should die more often if this was the recompense, I thought. The joke was dark, darker than I intended, and a shiver ran down my spine. The effects of the Truce-Waters were already starting to wane. Soon, the calm would fade. Soon, the panic would come.
"We are going to visit the Clan," I said suddenly. The decision came from somewhere deep, somewhere that had been waiting for this moment.
"W-what are you sure?" Soleil asked. Her bird form quivered with excitement. "I mean... did you not want to stop the Caduchicil first?"
"I did," I replied, feeling the first threads of pain threading through my skull. The Truce-Waters were fading faster than I wanted. "But now that Azellio is ours, I do not think we will find another clue anytime soon. For once, I am not going to wait another five months. At this rate, Alacryan forces will be on the shores of Dicathen before I stop Nylith. And perhaps that is exactly what they want."
"I am ready when you are, milord!" Soleil chirped, hopping from one foot to the other. "We just need to go south and reach the Hea—"
"We will need to find another way," I cut her off, not wanting to dampen her excitement but knowing it was necessary. "I really do not think my family will let me or Tessia travel that far from Zestier anytime soon."
"Milord, there is no other way." Soleil's voice was firm. "The Clan and the Djinn built the Hearth with the exact purpose of it remaining hidden from Epheotus."
"I know a Djinn we can ask for a tip," I said. "And cannot we use a portal? The Hearth was built with Djinn technology, was it not?"
"We would need to find a portal that—" Soleil stopped. Her golden eyes widened. "The one in Azellio! Right."
"Good," I said, and despite the pain that was beginning to creep through my veins, despite the fear that was starting to gnaw at the edges of my calm, I smiled. "We have a plan, then."
I heard three sharp raps knocking on the door, the type of knocking that announced someone who either had no patience for waiting or knew they would be welcomed regardless.
Before I could respond, the door swung open, and Soleil startled, fluttering upward to perch on a beam near the ceiling. Her golden eyes watched the newcomer with wary curiosity.
"Master Kamiel..." I said, keeping my voice flat despite the disappointment settling in my chest. "I did not expect you, of all people, to be the first visiting me."
It was not that I hated my music teacher. Kamiel Rennoux had taught me much about sound magic, about rhythm and resonance, about the way music could shape the world. But he was not my family.
He was not Tessia, whose fierce hugs always made me feel safe, or Mom, whose caring hands could smooth away any fear, or Dad, whose stoic presence was a fortress.
"What is that face, little prince?" Kamiel asked, pulling a nearby chair to the side of my bed with a scrape of wood on stone. He sat down, crossing his legs, his ginger hair catching the pale light. "Are you not happy to see your favorite teacher?"
"You are my only teacher," I deadpanned. "Well, if you do not count my parents and grandfather..."
Kamiel chuckled—that carefree, almost infuriating laugh that always made me feel like I was missing some private joke. He shoved a hand into his pocket and retrieved a small silver ring. My storage ring. He tossed it toward me.
"Here," he said. "I took the liberty of retrieving it for you."
I reached out to catch it. My right hand—my missing right hand—was not there. The ring hit the stump of my wrist with a soft thunk and bounced onto the bedsheet.
The scene was humiliating. I felt my face burn, the heat spreading down my neck. Master Kamiel bit his lip, his shoulders shaking slightly, and I knew he was trying not to laugh.
I flushed deeper and snatched the storage ring with my left hand. A sliver of mana confirmed what I needed to know: Avicenna's Vaultlamp was there. Finn Warend's crossbow. My wand-cane. The supplies that had survived the journey to Azellio. Everything I valued, everything I could not afford to lose, was still safe.
"What did you think?" Master Kamiel asked, noticing my fixed gaze on the ring. "That your favorite teacher would steal from you?"
"N-no," I said, though the hesitation in my voice betrayed me. "I was just paranoid. And again you are not my favorite teacher."
Master Kamiel stood, stretching his arms above his head with theatrical slowness. "I will leave you to your dreams, then, little prince. Goodnight."
He turned his back on me and walked toward the door, raising one hand in a casual wave. The door clicked shut behind him, and I was alone with the silence and the phantom ache where my hand used to be.
—
The next morning, Mom and Dad came to visit me. Berna had slipped into the room shortly before dawn, her massive body curled at the foot of my bed, her green eyes watching the door with quiet vigilance.
I reached out with my left hand and buried my fingers in her thick fur, drawing comfort from her warmth.
"Where is Tessia?" I asked, noticing the absence of my sister.
"In her room," Mom said, her voice gentle but firm.
"And why is she in her room?" I pressed.
"Because she needs to learn from her mistakes," Dad said. There was no anger in his voice, only a quiet disappointment that was somehow worse.
Grounded. They had grounded her. In ten years of life, our parents had never truly disciplined us. The realization made my stomach clench.
"Am I in trouble too?" I asked.
Mom reached out and caressed my hair, her fingers threading through the tangles. Her eyes drifted to the bandaged stump where my hand should have been, and I saw the grief there—the helpless, aching grief of a mother who could not undo what had been done to her child.
"Do not think about it, boy," she said softly. "Everything is fine."
I wanted to ask Dad about Azellio. About what he planned to do with the city, about the portal, about the ancient ruins that Nylith had called Cradletown.
Alea or Tessia must have told him by now. The portal alone made the valley the perfect site for a new city.
The Cyricon River, the religious significance, the historical weight of our birthplace... Azellio could become Elenoir's fourth great city.
And if its portal could be linked to the Hearth...
Azellio could also become the bridge that would guarantee Dicathen the help of the Asclepius Clan, or whatever remained of them after the fall of Mordain Asclepius.
"Dad," I said.
My father turned his full attention to me, his stern, serious gaze waiting. He had always been a man of few words, but when he looked at me like this I felt the weight of his love like a physical thing.
"Tell me, Corvis," he said.
"What do you think about Azellio?" I asked, flushing slightly. The question felt too large, too political, for a hospital room. But I needed to know. I needed to hear his plans, his vision, his hope for the future.
Mom and Dad exchanged a glance, and they smiled. Not the tight, worried smiles they had been wearing since they entered. Real smiles. Warm smiles.
"Already thinking about that ruined city, are you?" Mom asked, her voice soft with affection. They had expected this. Of course they had. Was I really so predictable? To my family—to the people who had watched me grow, who had seen me struggle, who had loved me despite every secret I kept—yes. I was.
"It is a great opportunity for Elenoir," Dad said, and I saw the glint of ambition in his eyes. "That cannot be denied."
I spent the rest of the morning speaking with my parents about far less interesting things. The weather. The palace gardens. The new foal born to one of the palace Highcolts. But beneath the mundane chatter, I felt the shape of something larger forming: a future in which Azellio rose from its ruins, in which Elenoir grew stronger, in which the sacrifices I had made began to bear fruit.
And I held onto that hope for it would be the foundation upon which we would the future.