Corvis Eralith
Two days until the Gem Banquet.
And the Moyalembic—the Lifework of one of the greatest water mages of all time—was a total failure.
The word echoed in my skull, bitter and insistent, as I stood in the cramped basement of Beer & Stone, surrounded by copper pipes and rubber tubing and the faint, metallic smell of water that had been cycled through the same circuit a hundred times.
I had poured everything into this device. Every hour of sleep I had sacrificed, every death I had died, every return I had made—all of it had been building toward this moment. And this was what I had to show for it.
"L-little Finn... this... this is unbelievable!" Durzek exclaimed, his voice thick with joy, his eyes wide as he watched the Moyalembic do its work.
The device hummed softly, a sound like distant thunder, and water flowed from the faucet at its end—clear, clean, drinkable.
It produced more water than it received, drawing on the ambient mana that permeated the air of this world like a second atmosphere.
It took me many hours of sleepless work to make the Moyalembic function. I had followed Avicenna's instructions to the letter, had cross-referenced every detail with the knowledge I had gained from the novel, had tested and retested every connection until my hands bled and my eyes blurred.
And despite the sheer joy radiating from the Oreguard dwarf—despite the way he was already calculating the fortune he would save, the prices he could lower, the competitors he would crush—I was not satisfied in the slightest.
The Moyalembic was meant to produce liters and liters of water from just a single drop.
That single drop was meant to trigger a chain reaction of mana condensation into water magic, which would then be filtered through many other pieces of glassware to separate fresh, drinkable water from the mana itself—which would then be expelled from small pecks in the overall device as mana vapors, invisible to the eyes, but safe for both mages and non-mages.
That was the theory. That was what Avicenna had described. That was the miracle I had promised myself I would recreate.
All of what I just said worked on my Moyalembic too.
Water was taken from the already present aqueducts leading into Beer & Stone. The water was passed through many circling rubber tubes and accelerated by gravity.
That water was then stored in copper tanks that, when filled to a certain level, started a magical reaction that caused the tanks to be filled in their other part by atmospheric mana—which would slowly become completely attuned with the water, becoming water-attuned mana.
Only then would the mana become magical water, mixing with the already present water.
This liquid would then pass through the last stage: the purification of the water and the separation between mana—which would exit the mechanism as magic vapor—and fresh water that would flow from one of the faucets located at the end of the Moyalembic.
Everything worked. The device functioned exactly as Avicenna had described. But the efficiency was nothing like what he had told me.
Despite following his instructions perfectly, despite dying seven times to learn how to build it correctly, despite sacrificing everything I had to make this work—the original Djinnic Moyalembic could produce dozens of liters from a few drops of water.
Mine had barely a one-to-three ratio between input and output. For every liter of water I put in, I got three out. It was better than nothing. It was better than anything the dwarves had ever created. But it was not enough. It would never be enough.
"I have to agree that this is quite impressive," Olfred admitted, his voice flat. He stood in the corner of the basement, his arms crossed, his eyes fixed on the humming device. "And you built it in just a night."
Yeah. But I had everything ready. And I had killed myself seven times to learn how to make it. I wanted to say the words aloud, wanted to see the look on his face when he understood what I had sacrificed, what I had endured. But I did not want to play the victim.
I was feeling exhausted. In other attempts at this—all chaotic, with no way to control where I would restart from—I had spent all the days before the Gem Banquet working on the Moyalembic, missing the event entirely.
In other attempts, I had been forced to return to Zestier because I had literally spent all night and day here in Burim, causing my family to worry. In other attempts, the Moyalembic had exploded, causing me severe injuries that would have ruined my hopes of becoming Throneholder.
Even if the Gem Banquet was just the first of many events, I needed to make a first impression that no dwarf would ever forget.
"Durzek, I think it is obvious that this device remains secret until the Gem Banquet is over," Olfred said, his voice cutting through my spiraling thoughts like a blade.
"Of course! After this? Ah, Finn could ask me to go blind into a pit of Sand Dwellers, and I would do it without a second thought!" Durzek exclaimed. "This will save me a fortune worth of water! And I will also be able to lower the prices of all my drinks! No one will be able to compete with Beer & Stone!"
"Yeah, not now." Olfred's voice was hard, final. "You can do whatever you want. After the Gem Banquet. Clear?"
"Crystal clear! As clear as this water! A blessing from Mother Earth!" Durzek opened a tap and filled his cupped hands with the Moyalembic's bounty, lifting it to his lips, drinking deeply.
I turned my back on the Moyalembic. A pale imitation of the Djinnic masterpieces.
I am just insulting the folk of calm currents with this, I told myself, but I was too tired to follow that intrusive thought.
"I want to go home," I said. "I need to sleep."
"Sure," Olfred said. "Let's go."
—
Berna licked my face, waking me from my slumber. Her tongue was warm and rough, and the sound of her growl pulled me from the depths of a dreamless sleep.
"Good morning, girl," I said, rubbing my eyes. The light filtering through my window was pale, early, the kind of light that came just after dawn.
A tap on the window signaled that Coco was waiting for me to greet her. I opened the window, and the robin hopped onto my bed, her golden eyes fixed on my face.
There was not the usual awkwardness between Berna and the Asura in disguise. No tension, no wariness, no silent standoff. They were both staring at me. Together. As if I was the thing that demanded their attention.
"There is something wrong with me?" I asked.
I took a portable mirror from my bedside table and raised it to my face. Instead of Corvis's reflection, it was Finn who stared back. The same brown eyes. The same rounded ears. The same dusky, earth-toned skin. The same hair the color of shale, cut short in the dwarven style.
"Did I really forget to remove my make-up?" I sighed.
But I was sure I had entered the Royal Palace as Corvis Eralith. I had walked past the guards, greeted the servants, spoken to my parents and Tessia. Everyone had seen me as myself.
Grandpa and Alea were the only ones who knew about Finn being my cover identity, but they would not have let me walk through the palace wearing a disguise.
I took a cloth I always kept to clean Berna's paws and scrubbed my face. No result. I did it again. No result. Again. No. Again. No.
"How much I hate this!" I exclaimed.
I had been able to remove my make-up with one hand. Why wasn't a cloth working anymore? As I passed my hand over my face with the intention of cleaning myself, as if by magic, Finn Warend's face—hair length included!—disappeared, returning me to Corvis Eralith.
My teal eyes stared back from the mirror. My gunmetal hair fell around my shoulders. My pale elven skin was pale and elven again.
"That is strange," I said.
And then something I had never expected to happen when I was alive happened. A wave of Insight—like those I received in the river, like those that had flooded my mind when I first understood REtrocurrent—crashed against my consciousness.
REtrocurrent. The Arbiter's power over the Edict of Aevum. The ability to move through time, to die and return, to walk the many currents of the river and emerge on a different shore.
REmould. The Arbiter's power over the Edict of Vivum. The ability to shape the substance of existence itself, to mold the raw material of Fate into new forms, to become something other than what I had been born to be.
The Arbiter's ability to shape their own mould of Fate. To shape the destiny that designed us to be who we were.
The same ability I had subconsciously used when I was two years old and had awakened my mana core: something this body was never meant to have naturally, for some reason I did not know.
I looked up at Berna and Coco. "What, you have never seen something like this?" I asked.
The Asura in disguise started to hop frantically around me, flapping her wings violently, chirping in a rapid, urgent rhythm. She was trying to tell me something.
An idea sparked in my mind. Asuras were able to take multiple forms. I was using REmould in a similar way, seeing how my vision of aether was influenced by the Asuras—the novel had described the infinite possibilities of aether through their limited Insight and only now I was learning a new scope thanks to Avicenna.
"Are you trying to teach me how to change... forms?" I asked.
Coco's eyes seemed to spark with happiness. She nodded, her small head bobbing up and down.
"Coco... can you not talk in that form?" I asked.
The Asura in disguise shook her head. Did that mean she could not, or that she did not want to? I wondered, but I ceased the thought. There would be time for questions later.
Right now, I needed to understand what I had become.
I raised the mirror, drew one slow breath, and commanded in my head as if I was casting a spell:
Become Finn Warend.
My hand swept down from brow to chin, carrying the intention with it the way a sculptor carries a chisel deliberate and irreversible. The reflection didn't wait.
It unraveled and rewrote itself in the same motion: brown eyes, rounded ears, shale-dark hair against dusky skin. A stranger's face completing itself in pieces, feature by feature, until nothing of mine remained.
I held the mirror steady and looked at him for a long moment. There Finn Warend was looking at me more alive and real than ever. No longer make-up, no longer contact lenses and clay.
I repeated the process. Hand on forehead. Move it down. REmould shaping and changing my features perfectly, seamlessly, effortlessly. I had to test its limits.
I imagined the face of Arthur Leywin—prior to obtaining his Asuran body, right when he was nine years old. Auburn hair. Bright azure eyes. The same facial expression, the same features I had read about a hundred times.
I concentrated. I repeated the process. As I passed my hand over my face, nothing changed. I remained Finn Warend.
So I cannot take the face of anyone I imagine, I observed. But was that because Arthur did not exist?
Maybe I could not take the appearance of someone who had been deleted from the world.
With that in mind, I imagined the face of another person—someone real, someone alive, someone I had seen with my own eyes. But even that did nothing.
It needs to be a person I have Insight into, then. Finn Warend was a very good identity. I had documents. I had clothes, make-up, voice, preferred weapons, and magic styles.
And more importantly, I had already lived as Finn Warend. I had worn his face for weeks, months, years. I had become him so completely that sometimes I forgot which of us was the mask and which was the truth.
REmould shaped my Vivum. My existence. It did not change it radically. I was still me, albeit with different focuses. I had noticed it during my first unraveling, when earth magic had come far more easily to me, when I had started to think more like a dwarf.
Finn Warend was a version of me that, instead of being born an elf, had been born a dwarf.
"Only one last experiment," I said, still wearing the appearance of Finn Warend. I moved the palm of my right hand—the one that seemed more fit for this—to my solar plexus. I hoped. I prayed.
The effect was instantaneous. But not the one I had hoped for. My light yellow core became a solid one. I had regressed an entire stage.
Immediately, I corrected it out of pure fear—fear that was washed down by Berna's courage, which kept me in control. Her presence in the bond was a steady flame, burning away the panic, holding me steady.
My back fell onto my bed. Coco hopped onto my chest and shook herself, letting out her peculiar cinders that cured all tiredness. The exhaustion that had been pressing down on me for days lifted, dissolved, vanished.
"Thank you so much," I said to the Asura in disguise, petting her head.
Through the bond, I felt a pang of jealousy. Berna approached me and started licking my face—both in affection and in playful revenge for giving attention to Coco instead of her. I laughed, the sound strange in my throat, and let her.
The Gem Banquet. It seemed it was going to be a lot easier than I had feared. I was not going to walk in there as an elf pretending to be a dwarf. I was going to walk in there as a true dwarf.
—
I had spent most of the day doing everything I could to keep my mind occupied.
Watching Alwyn's training with Grandpa, the way his white hair caught the light as he moved through the forms of the Mirrshield, the quiet pride in his eyes when he landed a strike exactly where he intended.
Talking with Tessia on one of the balconies of the Royal Palace, her voice bright and warm as she told me about her plans for the upcoming social season, the way the light caught her face and made her look like something out of a story.
Taking Berna to Mom so she could cuddle my bond and spend some time with Dad in the spare moments between his endless appointments as King. I filled the hours with noise and movement and the familiar rhythms of palace life, because if I stopped—if I let myself be still—I would start thinking about myself.
The Unraveler's Company was proceeding smoothly, as always.
New parties departed from the headquarters in Zestier, and many new parties returned—some with treasure, some with knowledge, some with nothing but the scars they would carry for the rest of their lives.
Albold and Ashton had grouped with another party as they waited for Finn. I had paid them a visit just today and explained that I was going to be busy in Darv for at least a couple of weeks.
That would give me time to prepare my next unraveling with the Dungeon Crawlers while still being able to do all the other things I needed to do.
With the moon—with Elenoir—already high in the sky, I decided it was a good time to speak with Avicenna. The night was quiet, the palace settling into the deep stillness that came after the servants had retired and before the guards changed their posts. I sat on my bed and held the Vaultlamp in my hands.
'Peace to you, Justiciar.' The Djinn's voice was warm, patient, the voice of someone who had been waiting for this conversation. 'I wonder if the Moyalembic has borne its fruits and has helped your people like it did with mine.'
"Peace to you too, Avicenna," I said, and the words felt heavy in my mouth. "And yes... that is what I wanted to talk to you about."
'Then speak, Justiciar. I am more than curious to hear of your progress.'
"The device worked, but... it was not like what you told me." I paused, gathering myself, forcing the words out. "I followed your instructions to the letter. But it is not nearly as productive as a true Moyalembic. I just made a cheap copy. A disgrace to the memory of the folk of calm currents."
'Do not say that, Justiciar. The mere fact that we are speaking is an honor to my people. It means we still live.' Avicenna's voice was soft, almost tender. 'Now, you are telling me the Moyalembic works perfectly, but it is not nearly as effective as the original of Paskael Mariohm of Sandand? I see. The reasons might be multiple, but I have a fear simmering inside my consciousness that I know the cause.'
"And what might that be?" I asked, though I already dreaded the answer.
'The quality of the raw materials you used.'
What? The materials I had used had been given to me by Elder Rahdeas, and the Warend Trading Company was known throughout all of Dicathen for its perfect supply chain.
They sourced from the best mines, the most skilled refiners, the most reliable merchants. If they could not provide good copper, then no one could.
"I do not understand," I said. "You mean I used copper of... poor quality?"
'Yes, Justiciar.' Avicenna's voice was heavy, weighted with centuries of grief. 'But that is not your fault. In fact, you could very well have used the best copper available to your people. But that copper is probably polluted. Unrefined. Dirty.'
"How is that possible?" I asked, and I turned to look at Berna.
She was always picky when she ate the metals I gave her, eating only certain parts even when I gave her ingots that should have been uniform in quality. I had assumed it was a quirk of her nature, a preference for certain textures or flavors. But what if it was something else? What if she could taste something I could not see?
"Berna," I said, "do you say the metals I give you are of poor quality?"
Berna growled an unsatisfied noise. Through our bond, I felt that she did not want to sound offensive, but yes. Most of what I gave her was not as tasty as she had imagined. She had been trying to tell me this for months, and I had not understood.
'The Indraths, Justiciar.' Avicenna's voice turned grim, the warmth draining from it like water from a cracked vessel. 'Focularsa suffered a catastrophe unlike anything before when the Dragons of Epheotus decided to annihilate my people. The land itself was scarred. The aether permeating the atmosphere, the soil, the water—everything was poisoned by what they did. You mentioned a desert, yes? In the Focularsa of Djinnkind, no deserts existed.'
"You are telling me that Dicathen's natural resources were looted?" I asked, and my voice came out sharper than I intended.
'Looted is not the word I would use, Justiciar. I would say "despoiled." By the consequences of what erased us.'
I gulped. The sound was loud in the quiet of my room, and I felt Berna's warmth press against my leg, grounding me. "What about Mausoleia?" I asked.
If Alacrya had suffered the same fate, then the situation was not as bad as it might have been.
'Mausoleia suffered similar destruction, but it was far more contained. The Vritra claimed that continent for themselves, and they have had millennia to hoard whatever remained of its resources. What was taken from Focularsa was taken by the Dragons. What was taken from Mausoleia was taken by the Basilisks. Both continents bear the scars of their masters.'
"That is... thank you for telling me," I said, and I meant it. But the words felt hollow, inadequate for the weight of what I had just learned.
Dicathen had a lack of good resources because the Indrath Clan had annihilated most of the continent and shaped it to hide their crimes. They had changed geography, climate, and who knew how many other things. The desert of Darv was not natural.
The scarcity that had shaped dwarven culture for millennia was not an accident of geography. It was a wound. A scar left by gods who had burned a civilization to ash and then reshaped the land to hide what they had done.
"Avicenna," I said, a new question forming in my mind, "was there a great forest in Focularsa?"
'Oh, you mean the Forest of Gaia? Yes, yes. It survived the extermination of my people, seeing how the folk of calm currents never established cities or important settlements there.'
It made sense. In Elenoir, there were far fewer dungeons than in the rest of Dicathen, and most of them were mana beast dens. The few exceptions were located near the Beast Glades.
The Elshire Forest had been spared because the Djinn had chosen to leave it untouched. They had let the ancestors of elvenkind grow in peace, and that choice had saved my homeland from the worst of the destruction.
"I live in that forest," I said, and I felt something shift in my chest—a strange mixture of pride and grief. "It is where my people built our civilization."
'A pleasure to hear that the Forest of Gaia still lives, Justiciar.' Avicenna's voice was warm again, almost fond. 'But I do wonder... are you an elf, Justiciar?'
"Y-yes!" I exclaimed, startled by the question. "How did you know?"
'Your people existed in my time, Justiciar. You were still primitives. For that reason, we decided to leave the Forest of Gaia be. We did not want to obstruct your growth.'
"And by doing that," I said slowly, the realization settling into me like a stone dropping into still water, "you spared us from the ire of Epheotus."
The Djinn had not built cities in the Elshire Forest. They had not mined its resources or altered its landscape or left any trace of their presence. They had simply... let it be, only a few portals scattered in what were now our main cities.
And because of that, the Dragons had seen no reason to destroy it. The ancestors of elvenkind had been allowed to grow, unaware that their survival was a gift from a people who had already been marked for death.
"Do you know something about humankind and dwarvenkind, Avicenna?" I asked, hoping for more, needing to understand.
'Those names do not ring any bell, no. Apologies for disappointing you, Justiciar.'
"No problem," I said, though it was a problem. It was always a problem. "I need some time to process what I have learned. Thank you again for everything you are telling me, Avicenna."
'Until next time, Justiciar.'
I set the Vaultlamp down and stared at the ceiling, at the shadows cast by the moonlight, at the familiar beams of wood that had been part of this room for longer than I had been alive.
The weight of what I had learned pressed against my chest, and I let it settle there, heavy and cold. Dicathen was wounded. Its resources were depleted, its land scarred, its very geography shaped by the violence of gods who saw it as nothing more than a battlefield.
And I was supposed to save it.