Two days before Corvis and Tessia Eralith's tenth birthday.
Corvis Eralith
The Brozefalk Island was Dicathen's largest island, located southwest of Darv, with the southern Grand Mountains visible on the horizon, looming like the sentinels that guarded Dicathen they were.
Their peaks were dusted with snow even in the height of summer, a stark white against the deep blue of the sky, and I found myself staring at them for longer than I intended.
There was something about mountains that always made me feel small, not in a crushing way, but in a way that reminded me of the vastness of the world and my place within it.
Brozefalk Island looked over an inlet between Darv and the Grand Mountains' southernmost border, creating a peaceful strip of sea that—if Darv wasn't a desert and the Grand Mountains weren't, well, the Grand Mountains—could have made for a great dwarven city.
The water was calm, a deep, reflective blue that caught the light of the rising sun and scattered it like scattered jewels.
A great spot for maritime trading with the Beast Glades, creating a way to reach the Wild East for Darv by sea, without needing to traverse the harsh conditions of the Grand Mountains.
It could truly make the dwarven Kingdom less isolated, less dependent on the whims of the humans that controlled the overland routes.
Potentially, the first aboveground city and also the first city on the shore of the sea for the short and sturdy people of Darv. The thought filled me with a strange sense of hope, a vision of a future where dwarves could look out at the horizon and see not just desert and stone, but the endless expanse of the ocean.
The climate here, thanks to the powerful winds of the southern sea, was far less hot. In fact, due to Dicathen being so large and the Brozefalk so far south, the climate was a strange mixture of Earthen Atlantic and subarctic climates.
It wasn't as cold as Elenoir's north, but it wasn't as hot as the Darvish desert either, nor as warm and temperate as Sapin. It was similar to the climate of Patagonia back on Earth—wild, untamed, beautiful in its harshness.
The wind carried the scent of salt and brine, a sharp, clean smell that filled my lungs and made me feel more alive than I had in days.
As Finn Warend, I stood on the pebble beach that looked out at the inlet, the Grand Mountains far in the distance.
The dawn was bathing Brozefalk Island in shades of pink and orange that made my surroundings beautiful like a painting.
The light caught the edges of the clouds, turning them into bands of gold and crimson, and the sea reflected the colors back in a shimmering, liquid mirror.
"You will be ten in a few days, right?" Olfred, who had obviously accompanied me here, asked, arms crossed as he looked at the scenery with me. His voice was flat, but there was a softness in his eyes that I rarely saw.
"The day after tomorrow," I replied. "You... you aren't complaining about us being here?"
"And why should I complain?" Olfred scoffed, a rare hint of amusement in his voice. "It is a good place. But Elder Rahdeas failed to fill me in on why you wanted to be here."
I looked around myself, at the stretch of pebbled beach, the calm inlet, the distant mountains.
"I think this is a good place for a new city," I said. "If I become Throneholder, I would like to found one here—a maritime outpost."
"And making the Warend Trading Company trade by sea too? That is ambitious, kid," Olfred said, his tone carrying a note of respect. "And I do not know of ships that can travel across all of Dicathen, even if they remain near the shores."
Right, Dicathian boatbuilding left much to be desired.
Elenoir had Petaldrifts as our greatest ship design, perfect for bringing people across the rivers and the longest and largest ones even some goods, but useless in the ocean.
Sapin had fishing boats that could go out to sea, but nothing that could stay out for more than a couple of days.
As for Darv, dwarves didn't have any kind of navy. The thought was a gap in our defenses, a vulnerability that I knew Agrona would exploit if given the chance.
Even if Arthur and Nico weren't in this world, I couldn't count on the fact that Agrona or any other Alacryan wouldn't make a ship able to cross the ocean: they certainly had the resources, knowledge, and time necessary to design and build them on a massive scale.
I knew that Alacrya was west of Dicathen, but whether north or south I couldn't actually tell. In the novel, the Alacryan navy had come toward Etistin, on Dicathen's western coast, but they were spread out all across the coasts south of the Sapinese capital.
And some ships were even spotted coming from more north than Etistin. Nothing made it impossible for the Alacryans to make a sort of naval blockade around Dicathen during the war, using the hidden portals in the Beast Glades as footholds in the continent.
Thinking about those portals, I clicked my tongue.
One of the goals of the Unraveler's Company—a hidden one only I knew about—was finding those portals, but in five months since the founding of the Company and with many new parties forming each day, not even a single one had been spotted.
If the Alacryans wanted to remain hidden, they would remain hidden, no matter how many Unravelers were sent to the Wild East.
"We will work on something," I said to Olfred, forcing optimism into my voice. "We will find a way."
We were stopped by a chorus of squawks. We turned, and walking awkwardly from behind a small hill of pebbles was a true army of penguins—or penguin-like mana beasts.
They waddled toward us with a determination that was almost comical, their chunky bodies swaying with each step.
"Not those seabirds," Olfred lamented as the penguins marched on us, but he wasn't preparing any spell.
"What are they?" I asked. "I have never seen such mana beasts."
They weren't even true penguins. They looked like them in body, but they seemed like flightless birds made dwarves.
They had long, brown feathers covering their bodies that made them look like they were covered in a thick layer of earth-colored beard. Their beaks were sharp, their eyes bright, and they moved with a sense of purpose that I couldn't quite decipher.
"Beardgwyns," Olfred said, his tone a bit disgusted as he raised a pillar of earth below his feet to stand many meters above the Beardgwyns. "E-Class mana beasts."
Berna, who had been brought to Brozefalk through a flying golem of Olfred's, stood up to look menacingly at the approaching birds, but the Beardgwyns continued squawking as if to greet her, flapping their chunky wings in salutation.
The brown seabirds started to surround me and Berna, pressing their fat bellies against us and forming a circle with me at its center.
"L-leave me! I am not one of you!" I shouted as my vision was blocked by feathers. Berna took my collar with her jaws and raised me up, lifting me out of the sea of squawking birds.
"How interesting," Olfred commented from atop his pillar. "Do they feel you are an elf and they get close to you?"
"I don't know," I said, summoning another stone pillar like Olfred's so that Berna could put me there. The birds continued to mill around below, their squawks fading into a chorus of confusion.
These mana beasts were more likely feeling my soul, Eralith Asclepius. Soleil had explained to me that the reason why the mana beasts of the Elshire Forest were so close with me was in part because of my Phoenix soul. The thought was strange, comforting and unsettling in equal measure.
I looked at the Beardgwyns below my pillar, then at Olfred standing on his own just a few spans higher. Brozefalk Island had potential, I just had to discover how to unleash it and make it shine once I would have the power to do so.
Once I would be Throneholder of Darv.
The wind howled across the pebbled beach, carrying the scent of salt and the distant promise of change.