Corvis Eralith
This time, for the first time since I discovered REtrocurrent in the Red Gorge many years ago, the impossible non-water of the river did not take me with force and brutality, rattling me, overwhelming me, drowning me.
There was no crushing pressure, no violent current, no desperate thrashing against something that wanted to drown me.
Instead, this time, it was gentle.
Like the calm currents of a gentle brook in the Elshire Forest, where I could have fished with Dad in the few precious moments we spent together when he was not buried beneath the duties of a king.
Those moments were rare. So rare that I could count them on one hand and still have fingers left over. But they existed. They were real.
Dad and me, alone, sitting on the bank of some nameless stream, lines in the water, silence between us that was full—full of the things we did not need to say to each other.
Tessia had always been too energetic for fishing, too impatient to wait for a fish that might never come.
Grandpa had never been the one for it either. And even if he had been, he and Dad never spent time alone together unless it was for... family fights. The distance between them had only grown over the years, a canyon I did not know how to bridge.
That was the emotion I felt as the calm currents—the same currents Avicenna had spoken of when he explained the name Djinn to me, I realized—lulled me. Peace.
Yes, peace of mind and of being.
I stared up at the sky, my youthful and strong Soul-Body floating on these calm waters.
The impossible ceiling high above, where the countless threads of Fate evolved and devolved around themselves in patterns I could not begin to understand, stared back at me.
The golden threads moved slower here, or perhaps they only seemed slower because I was no longer drowning. Perhaps the Truce-Waters were not a place of rushing currents and desperate survival, but a place of stillness.
A place where you could finally stop fighting and simply... exist.
"For once, it's peaceful in here," I murmured, and the words felt strange in my mouth. This was not the voice of a nine-year-old prince.
A wave of Insight flooded my mind, gentle as the waters that held me.
Thanks to Avicenna, I could now swim in this section of the river. Now that I had Insight into the Truce-Waters, as the Djinn called them, the currents did not fight me. They welcomed me.
That other part of the river—the part that had claimed me many times by now, the part that had shown me the golden threads and then thrown me back into the world—was a true storming ocean with no hope of survival.
It was an echo of the Insight the Asuras, the Dragons specifically, had of aether. And the Asuras had always been a warring people. All eight races of them. That fact had been stated very, very clearly in the novel.
Their bellicose nature was reflected in their Insight over aether, and thus, in the river.
The Warworn Rapids. That was the name of that section of the river. The place where souls went to drown.
"Good," I said again, and I heard my voice once more.
It was smooth and adult, not the high-pitched voice of my true nine-year-old body. In this place, I was not a child. I was something else. Something that had died and returned enough times to wear the weight of it in ways that had nothing to do with years.
I swam and stood straight in the Truce-Waters, trying to look at my reflection on their surface. But the Truce-Waters were too crystalline to reflect my face.
They reflected the light of each golden thread above, making the waters seem almost golden themselves. Yet somehow, they did not burn my eyes.
Because I had no true sight here. Obviously.
I was not seeing with eyes. I was seeing with something else I didn't know how to name.
"Now, how do I return?" I asked myself.
In the Warworn Rapids, it was the river itself that spit me out, back to the past compared to when I died.
Here, it did not seem to be the case. I could wait—perhaps for eternity—for the Truce-Waters to bring me back to the world. Or I could return there myself.
"Ars Aquamorph!" I exclaimed, as an idea struck my mind.
Could I use water magic to somehow weave the river to do my bidding? To bring me back where I wanted to go? I had to try.
But no mana answered my call. Obviously, there was no mana in this place and my Soul-Body didn't have a mana core because this was not even a real body. I was a ghost floating on water that was not water, beneath a sky that was not sky, staring at threads that were not threads.
I clicked my tongue in frustration and turned my head upward again.
"Are you ever going to speak to me?" I asked Fate. No answer came. The golden threads continued their eternal dance, indifferent to my voice, my questions, my desperate need for answers. "Why did you speak to Arthur and you are not speaking to me? Oh, sorry. Arthur-Grey."
No answer again.
"You gave me REtrocurrent and only you know what else, but you refuse to help me?" I asked, and I heard the anger in my voice, the exhaustion, the terrible loneliness of carrying something I did not understand. "Yeah, yeah. No answer."
It seemed arguing with an infinite quantity of golden threads was useless. They did not care about my frustration. They did not care about my fear. They simply were, turning and unturning, weaving and unweaving, and I was nothing but a speck caught in their currents.
As I looked at the placid, slightly golden waters around me, I could not help but think of how many sections of this river existed. How many civilizations other than the Djinn had discovered aether? Even a tiny bit?
Fate and the Edicts of aether were the Asuran way.
Peace and the Articles of aether were the Djinnic one.
How many other ways were there? How many other cultures had looked at the same fundamental force and seen something completely different?
With that in mind, for once, I enjoyed the lull of the river. I stopped fighting. I stopped struggling. I simply floated, suspended between the golden threads above and the crystalline waters below, and I waited for REtrocurrent to do its work.
The current did not fight me. It held me, gentle as the arms of Mom when she held me and Tessia when we were toddlers, and I let myself be held.
For the first time in my life, I was not afraid of these waters.
—
I opened my eyes—my true eyes—and I was once again inside my office in the headquarters of the Company on Riverwine Racine.
My body was sprawled across the desk Grandpa had gifted me, my cheek pressed against the polished wood, my limbs heavy and unresponsive. The room was dim, the winter light filtering through the window in pale, exhausted ribbons, and everything hurt.
Everything except my mind, which floated somewhere above the wreckage of my body, still cradled by the gentle currents of the Truce-Waters.
Berna was licking my face urgently, her tongue rough against my cheek, and through the bond I felt her confusion—a war between her shock at my state and the echo of my peace. Peace of mind, at least.
The lulling effects of the Truce-Waters were strong in me, softening the edges of my panic, muffling the screams that should have been tearing through my skull.
But my body... I felt awful. My stomach ached like it never had before, a deep, gnawing pain that radiated outward into my chest, my limbs, my very bones. My muscles and nerves were burning as if struck by lightning, each breath a fresh wave of agony.
What happened? I asked in my head, the only part of me that did not ache, strangely enough.
"Your Highness!" I heard a familiar voice exclaim. Through foggy vision, I saw Alea.
Her light blue eyes—which usually held an affection that was a strange mixture of Mom's motherly warmth and Tessia's fierce sibling love—were wide open in fear.
She had never looked at me like this before. She had seen me train until I collapsed, had watched me push myself past every limit she thought I had, but she had never seen me like this.
This never happened before. What had just happened? Did I not travel back in time?
"I—" I stopped myself as a deep pain clutched my throat, words dying before I could speak them.
"Don't speak," Alea said urgently.
She moved to get closer to me, but Berna growled protectively—something she had never done, not even with the Vesperkins back in the Sea Den.
The sound was low, warning, the sound of a creature who had decided that no one, not even someone she recognized, would touch her bond while he was vulnerable.
'Justiciar,' I heard Avicenna's voice, calm and measured despite the chaos around me. 'While I cannot see what is happening, I can guess with confidence that you have gone through something traumatic.'
I ignored the Djinn, too confused to pay him any attention. I only registered that he was speaking with me. I did not go back in time. I came back to life. That was the difference.
The Warworn Rapids had always returned me to a point before my death. The Truce-Waters had returned me to the moment after.
I had not traveled through time. I had simply... not died.
The C-Pill! I screamed inwardly. The mana core of the Cravenite was already swallowed, but I could still feel the harsh, bitter taste of almond pervading my entire mouth.
"Alea," I said weakly, my voice coming through ragged gasps.
My thoughts should have been far more chaotic, given the immense pain I was going through. But the Truce-Waters... just as with the Warworn Rapids, I had felt the recoil of their violence every time I came back.
Now, I was still feeling the calmness of them cradling my soul-body, holding me together when I should have been falling apart.
"It's alright, Your Highness," Alea said, and her voice was trembling. "It's alright."
Please don't think I am suicidal, I begged inwardly. Please don't look at me and see someone who wants to die. I am trying so hard to live. I am trying so hard to save everyone.
'I assume something happened,' Avicenna said, his voice a quiet thread in the back of my mind. 'I can only wish that Mordain is shining in your favor, Justiciar.'
As if things were not confusing enough, Avicenna had just spoken the name of the lord of the Asclepius Clan. Mordain. The Phoenix who had defied the Indraths, who had hidden his people for millennia, who might be the only Asura I could trust.
As Alea made to guide me outside, I reached for the Vaultlamp. My fingers closed around it, the crystal warm against my palm, and I pulled it toward my chest. Alea's hands stopped me.
"No," I said through gritted teeth. "I need this lamp."
"Your Highness, you just—" Alea stopped herself before she finished.
"I am not suicidal, for fuck's sake!" I exclaimed, and my body protested with a fresh wave of agony. The words tore out of me, raw and desperate, because I could not let her think that.
"I did not mean it that way," Alea stuttered.
The always cool and slightly playful maid, the powerful Lance who had trained me in secret for years, was nowhere to be seen. In her place was someone who had been afraid, who had been seconds too late, who had almost watched a child die.
"Ignore what happened," I said, gritting my teeth against the pain as the effects of the Truce-Waters began to wane.
"But—"
"Ignore it!" I shouted, and with the last of my strength, I slid the Vaultlamp containing Avicenna's consciousness safely into my storage ring.
That lamp was probably the most valuable thing I had ever had in this life. The key to knowledge that could give Dicathen a true chance against Alacrya.
The Djinn were peaceful. They were the folk of calm currents. But for what was waiting for my home, I needed to dishonor their memory. I needed to use their discoveries to defend Dicathen against Alacrya.
I let Alea bring me back home.