Corvis Eralith
My soul—because this juvenile elven body in the prime of its years that I inhabited here in the river was my soul, I realized as a wave of Insight crashed against my mind—was rattled by the currents of the river of time as I tried to swim against the current.
The non-water buffeted me to the right, and I beat my legs, flapped my arms to the left, trying to gain precious centimeters upward.
Then the current shoved me violently to the left, spinning me end over end, making my head whirl until I lost all sense of direction.
Only that... my head could not spin in this place, could it? No. That was not how this worked. I was not a body here. I was something else. Something that had no business existing in a place like this, where the laws that governed the living world had no meaning.
I shook myself—or whatever passed for shaking in this realm—and continued to swim upward.
Up and up until I was once again looking at the infinite vaulted ceiling of Fate, where an uncountable number of golden threads stretched and turned in every direction, weaving patterns that would take eternity to understand and a single moment to unravel.
I looked around myself, but as soon as I turned my head—
I was standing on a branch. Below me, Berna was holding a fish with one paw and a cluster of Cravenites in another.
Here? I had returned here? This was the third time I had died and the river had claimed me again. But every time I went REtrocurrent, I returned at a different point.
In the Red Gorge, it had been a full day before. When Berna killed me, it was perhaps ten minutes before she crushed my neck. And now... a couple of hours?
The inconsistency gnawed at me, a thread I could not follow, a pattern I could not trace. But there was no time for that now.
"Let's find that Cravenite again and return home," I murmured, and the words felt strange in my mouth.
—
With the beast core of the Cravenite's "pack leader" safely stored in the ring on my left index finger—where I also always kept the fragments I had retrieved from the Sea Den and my wand-cane—I walked the streets of the Queen's Grove back to the Royal Palace.
It was time for my next step. And that step could have been the next dungeon I would visit—bringing Tessia along this time—more training, and new attempts at recreating the Mirage Walk technique.
For Tessia, I would probably go out as Corvis Eralith and choose a dungeon that had no traces of the Ancient Mages in them. Perhaps I could bring Alwyn along as well.
While the most important and most valuable dungeons were built by the Djinn—the Asuras only knew how many years in the past—the greatest number of them were actually just dens of mana beasts.
The Unraveler's Company had been founded to explore the ruins of the Ancient Mages; for that reason, I had not even thought about visiting one of the "lesser" dungeons.
I needed insight over Fate; fighting a snarler would not miraculously grant me enlightenment over the highest form of aether that existed.
Moreover Elder Rahdeas had explained to me that to avoid, for now, too much aggression from the Adventurer's Guild, the Company of the Unraveler was to only access dungeons that had clear archaeological value—which did not always equal economic value.
While my mind always compared dungeons to the Red Gorge, I always needed to remind myself that the Red Gorge was an exception. An ancient Djinn ruin, a mine of stone, minerals and mana crystals, and a den of Phoenix Wyrms all at once. It was rare for all those characteristics to merge into a single dungeon.
So that meant I would search for a dungeon in the Elshire Forest, or at least within Elenoir's borders. While the Elshire Forest did not have any Djinnic ruins save for the portals of Zestier, Eidelholm, and Asyphin, it had plenty of other dungeons.
I arrived at the Royal Palace and greeted a few servants.
I expected Alwyn to rush at me, but my best friend was not at the entrance hall today. Probably off to training again, I said in my head. With Grandpa.
Grandpa taking Alwyn as a student was another of the many surprises I was happy about. It meant Alwyn did not need me to make himself valuable.
However, Grandpa indulging Alwyn's desire to learn all elven weapons was something I did not understand. But I was not the almost two-hundred-year-old elf with multiple experiences of war and combat.
I walked toward my room. I saw Tessia playing with some of her many friends in one of the living rooms of the palace.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Master Kamiel trying to court Alea, who was surely trying her best not to accidentally harm my music and sound magic teacher.
I briefly waved at Dad, who was deep in his administrative work, as he always was. I saw Mom happily giving instructions to newly hired servants, the Queen spending time teaching even simple janitors the ways of the Royal Palace.
With Berna always behind me, I finally arrived at the door of my room.
I took the handle and turned it.
A myriad of arrows cocooned around me, flabbergasting me as my heartbeat ran like a drum.
Before I had time to even think, I found myself in a blindingly yellow space where, standing tall in front of me, stood a man I recognized all too well.
"Don't be afraid, Corvis." Windsom Indrath in his human form, his galaxy eyes looking at me, Overseer of Dicathen, said.
His voice was smooth, patient, the voice of something that had been watching for a very long time and would continue watching long after I was dust. "My name is Windsom and I am an Asura. What your kind refers to as gods."
I made a step back, fear taking over me. My thumb twitched toward my storage ring, toward the Cravenite's beast core that had already killed me once, and for a wild, desperate moment I considered swallowing it again—right here, right now, in front of this being who had watched me be born.
But no. Not now. Not yet. I did not know if REtrocurrent would work with an Asura standing in my room, did not know if the river could reach me when a god was looking, and I was not willing to test it.
I looked around me, searching for Berna, my eyes darting to the corners of the blinding yellow space that had swallowed my room whole. She had been behind me. She was always behind me. But here, in this place that was not anywhere, there was only me and him and the terrible weight of his attention.
"If it is your bond you are worried about, she is completely fine," Windsom said.
He closed his eyes as he spoke, a gesture that should have been ordinary, human, but on him it was something else—a deliberate closing of doors, a retreat of something that had been looking at me and was now looking elsewhere.
When he opened them again, I felt the weight of his gaze settle on me once more, patient, infinite, like the space between stars. "She is a creation of ours, after all."
"C-creation of ours?" I echoed, and my voice came out thin, reedy, the voice of a child who had just realized the ground beneath his feet was not ground at all.
"You have bonded with a mana beast created by Asuras, Corvis." Windsom's expression did not change. His tone did not change. Everything about him was unreadable, a mask carved from something that had never needed to learn human expressions. "She is Ashmavasa—Flesh of Stone, Stone of Flesh—forged by Titan's hands. A creature of an age before your kind learned to walk upright."
"Y-you want her back?" I asked, and I felt the tears coming—not the tears I had planned, not the performance I had prepared for moments like this, but something real, something I could not control.
The child in me, the one I had always tried to suppress, came forth in that moment, and I did not fight it. I let it show. I let him see the nine-year-old prince who was afraid, who did not understand, who was standing in front of something he could not comprehend. Because if he saw that, perhaps he would not look deeper.
Windsom tilted his head. The movement was small, precise, the movement of something that had learned to mimic life so perfectly that the imitation had become indistinguishable from the thing itself.
"No," he said. "Titans's creations choose their masters. If your Guardian Bear has chosen you, then no. I am not going to take her back."
He was speaking to me like I was something that might be useful, something that might be worth the effort of speaking to. And, he was treating me differently than he treated Arthur. Which meant he did not know I was reincarnated.
"T-then why are you speaking with me... Lord Windsom?" I asked, and I made my voice small, made it tremble, made it the voice of a boy who had never been anything but a boy.
The thing about Titan's creations I had already suspected—in the novel, when Aldir died, his weapon had passed to Eleanor, but it was the weapon that chose, not the wielder. I had hoped the same was true for Berna. Now I knew.
"To your eyes, this world might seem huge." Windsom's voice was soft, almost gentle, and that gentleness was more terrifying than any anger could have been. "Dicathen might seem huge. But there are many more things outside of your continent. And through your bond, you have already witnessed one such thing."
He meant the corruption. The Vritra's taint that had poisoned Berna, that had turned her into something she was not, that had nearly killed her and me both. I forced my face to show confusion, to show fear, to show nothing of the understanding that was screaming behind my eyes.
"You mean what harmed Berna? Great One?" I asked, and I let my voice crack on the last word, let him see a child reaching for a title he did not understand.
"Yes." Windsom's eyes did not leave mine. "And Dicathen is going to become a target of them. The Vritra."
"Vritra?" I echoed, and the word tasted in my mouth like the bitter almond of the Cravenite's poison.
"A rogue Clan of Asuras that has rebelled against the order of this world," Windsom said, and his voice was still soft, still patient, still the voice of something that had been explaining things to lesser beings for longer than I could imagine. "They are plotting to conquer it whole. And Dicathen will be the first step. But worry not. The Asuras do not intend to let that happen."
"Then... my role?" I asked, and I let the words hang in the air between us, let him hear the hope in them, the fear, the desperate need to be something more than a boy.
"Unfortunately, a direct conflict between the Vritra and us will result in an outcome neither side desires." Windsom's gaze held mine. "You will become the agent through which my master's will is accomplished."
Before I could say anything else, Windsom turned.
The movement was unhurried, unhurriable, the movement of something that had never needed to rush because space itself bent to its will. I stood frozen, watching the line of his back, the way he stood in that blinding yellow space like it was the most natural place in the world, like he had created it with a thought and would unmake it with another.
"I will make myself seen again, Corvis Eralith," the dragon said, and his voice came from everywhere and nowhere, from the space around me and the space inside me, from the walls that were not walls and the sky that was not sky. "Until further instructions, continue with your work. With your Unraveler's Company."
With that last declaration, the pocket dimension I was held in collapsed on itself, folding inward like a flower closing at dusk, and I was back in my room. The yellow light faded.
The weight of his presence lifted. And I was standing in front of my own door, my hand still on the handle, Berna's body pressing against me, the familiar scents of my room wrapping around me like a blanket I had not known I needed.
My hands were shaking. I looked down at them, at the hands of a nine-year-old prince. My whole body was shaking.
I leaned against the doorframe, pressed my forehead against the cool wood, and let myself breathe.
I looked at Berna, my dutiful Guardian Bear, and she licked my face. The warmth of her tongue, the rough pressure of it against my cheek, the familiar weight of her presence pressing against my side—it steadied me.
The shaking in my hands slowed. The hammering of my heart eased. Through the bond between us, I felt her pouring the courage to stand before a god into me. Courage and peace of mind.
"Thanks, girl," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt.
Then I brought the Cravenite's core to my lips. My fingers were trembling again, but I did not stop. I could not stop. The words Windsom had spoken were still echoing in my skull, settling into the spaces where my thoughts should have been, and I needed... more.
I bit down. I fueled it with copious amounts of mana, pouring everything I had into the small, red sphere, and I felt the poison release, felt the familiar pull of the river reaching for me.
As the current claimed me, I saw something burst through the window of my room—a flash of red and grey, wings beating against the glass, a shape I recognized even as the darkness began to close in.
But before I could understand anything, before I could reach for the small bird that had been with my family for years, the river swallowed me whole.
Soleil Asclepius
In my Limitless Physique, I was managing one of the many flocks I nurtured across all Zestier.
This one was a flock of woodpeckers, their heads bobbing as they took the beetles I offered them, their calls a familiar percussion against the quiet of the morning. It was peaceful. It was calm.
It was exactly the kind of morning I had come to treasure in the years since I had made this city my home.
Then I felt a disturbance.
The ambient aether of the elven capital shuddered, recoiling from something that did not belong. I knew that signature. I had felt it before, in the burning of the Faircities, in the screams of the Djinn as their works were unmade around them.
The aether arts of the Indrath Clan. Barbaric. Savage.
I was moving before I had finished the thought, my wings beating a rhythm that carried me across the city in seconds, but the aether was still wrong, still screaming, and I could feel—I could feel him—Lord Eralith—
In my Limitless Physique I was managing one of the many flocks I nurtured across all Zestier. This one was a flock of woodpeckers I was feeding some beetles.
These few years of staying in Elenoir had been very peaceful. It was just as Lord Mordain always said: elves and Phoenixes were perfectly harmonious with one another.
Perhaps it was because elves were so in tune with nature and mana, like the Asuras of old. But now I understood it deeply. And it also perfectly explained to me why Lord Mordain had fallen in love with Queen Elenoir, why they had had a chick, why that chick had been reincarnated as Corvis, with his former mother now his twin sister.
As I thought of those melancholic memories, I felt a sudden change in the ambient aether. The tyrannical aether arts of Indrath, morphing the ambient aether of the Royal Palace of Zestier.
I felt the aether recoil, felt it twist and bend under the weight of something that had no right to be here, and I was moving before I could stop myself, my body hurtling toward Lord Eralith's—
In my Limitless Physique I was managing one of the many flocks I nurtured across all Zestier—
In my Limitless Physique I was managing one of the many flocks I nurtured across all Zestier—
In my Limitless Physique I was managing one of the many flocks I nurtured across all Zestier—
In my Limitless Physique I was managing one of the many flocks I nurtured across all Zestier—
I was standing on Lord Eralith's windowsill. The Indrath was gone.
The aether was still settling, still shuddering, still trying to find its shape after being bent so violently out of it. But he was gone.
Lord Eralith blinked once. Then he leaned on the doorframe and sighed, and there was relief in that sound.
I watched as he looked at his bond—the Guardian Bear he had named Berna, the creature of stone and flesh that had been forged by hands I had probably known once, in Epheotus—and I watched as Berna watched him.
Her green eyes held something that made my chest tighten. Pain. Confusion. The particular anguish of a creature who knew her bond was hurting and did not know how to help.
Lord Eralith nodded, as if Berna had spoken to him, as if they had reached some agreement I could not hear. Then he reached into his storage ring and retrieved a beast core.
Small. Red. Ordinary. And I knew—I knew with a certainty that sat in my chest like a stone—what he was going to do with it.
Lord Eralith! I screamed in my mind, shedding my Sambhogakaya, bursting through the window in a rush of feathers and fury, but I was not fast enough.
Something took him before I could reach him, before I could stop him, before I could do anything but watch as his eyes went distant, as his body went still, as something that was not death and not life claimed him and carried him away from me.
And then—
In my Limitless Physique I was managing one of the many flocks I nurtured across all Zestier. This one was a flock of woodpeckers I was feeding some beetles.
In my Limitless Physique I was managing one of the many flocks I nurtured across all Zestier. This one was a flock of woodpeckers I was feeding some beetles.
In—
Lord Eralith's window was closed. The glass was whole. And through it, I could see him—sweating, trembling, his hand pressed against the doorframe as if it was the only thing holding him upright.
"One more," I heard him murmur, and Berna growled and licked his face, and he laughed, but the sound was hollow.
"I am fine," he said, and his hand came up to stroke Berna's fur, and his voice was steady, but his eyes were not. "Thank you for everything, girl. I know this must be confusing for you."
What had the Dragon told him? I watched him stand there, watched the way his shoulders were still too tight, the way his breath was still too shallow, the way he was pretending for Berna's sake that he was something he was not.
And Berna—Berna, who was a Guardian Bear, the most empathetic of all Guardian Beasts forged by Titan Clans—looked at him with eyes that held deep, deep pain, and I knew she was not seeing what he was showing.
Lord Eralith turned his head toward the window where I was still perched, and his eyes found mine, and he smiled.
"Coco," he said. "You want something to eat?"