Corvis Eralith
I returned from the Warworn Rapids without going much back in time.
In fact, I was still mid-dictation, Avicenna's voice resounding in my mind as if no time had passed at all—as if the explosion that had torn through my office, that had seared my flesh and shattered my consciousness, had never happened.
The river had swallowed me and spat me back out in the same breath, and the only evidence that I had died was the phantom ache behind my eyes.
'Justiciar? Are you still listening? Apologies, I should speak slower,' Avicenna said, his voice tinged with concern.
The mistake is mine, I said, forcing the words through the fog that still clung to my thoughts. I lost concentration.
I stared at the puddle of water on my desk, the remnants of my Bubblespell, the carefully constructed sphere that had collapsed the moment I lost control. It had been so close. I had been so close.
The codex had been forming, the Articles of Peace aligning in a pattern that should have worked, should have translated into something usable, something revolutionary.
And then I had pushed too hard, did it too fast, and the whole thing had unraveled in a flash of blinding light.
What happened to my Bubblespell? I must have rushed too much. I didn't even know what Avicenna's spellform did, didn't even know if my theory of using REmould to change the Articles of Peace into a mana equivalent could work.
I had been so eager, so certain, so desperate to make progress that I had skipped the foundational steps. And the river had claimed me for my arrogance.
I massaged my eyelids, still feeling the phantom pain from the sudden, blinding death that never was.
The memory of it clung to me like my own skin; the heat, the light, the terrible, absolute certainty that I had ended.
Berna was in the Royal Palace. When I had left this morning, I had entrusted her to Mom, thinking that she would be better there, that she would be happier there, that I did not need her constant presence at my side.
Now I regretted that decision.
When I died, having Berna beside me made the memory of it less daunting, less... dehumanizing, in a way. Her warmth, her solidity, the steady pulse of her presence through our bond. It reminded me that I was still myself, still alive, still Corvis Eralith, still fighting. Without her, death was just death.
Cold, absolute, empty and utterly alone.
For all their might, not even the effects of the Truce-Waters through Inner Current could make death something I could return from totally unscathed.
Mentally, the scars accumulated with each reset, each death, each return. The river took something from me every time, some small piece of the person I had been, and I did not know if I would ever get it back.
Pnd yet, physically, I felt as good as new. The river was generous that way. It healed the flesh even as it eroded the soul.
I sank a bit deeper into the armchair, the leather creaking beneath me, and let out a long, slow breath. I needed to understand the basics before I tried again.
Avicenna's Lifework of Aetherology was a masterpiece, a theoretical framework that had taken a Sage of the Djinn years to develop. I could not simply replicate it in an afternoon, no matter how much I wanted to. I needed to research the Articles of Peace, to understand how they interacted, to learn the language of the spellforms before I tried to translate them into mana.
And while Avicenna could surely help me—he had already helped me so much already—there were still so many dungeons to explore, so many ruins to uncover, so many fragments of Djinnic knowledge scattered across the Beast Glades.
And now that I thought about it... it had been some weeks since I had gone on an Unraveling with the Dungeon Crawlers as Finn Warend.
I stashed Avicenna's Vaultlamp safely back inside my storage ring, the crystalline lamp smooth and cold against my fingers, and looked at the detailed map of the Beast Glades that I kept in my office at the Company.
The parchment was worn at the edges, creased from use, marked with notes and symbols that only I could read. I traced the borders of the Wild East with my fingertip, following the lines that separated the known from the unknown, the explored from the untamed.
I was near the light stage of the yellow core now, which meant that I was not that far from the strongest mages within the ranks of the Adventurer's Guild.
Soon, the Wild East would stop being a challenging enough place for me to train.
The dungeons that had once tested my limits would become routine, the mana beasts that had once threatened my life would become prey.
But by that time, I planned to have already visited the Hearth. If the Phoenixes truly considered me the rightful heir to the Asclepius Clan—just because I was inhabiting the soul of Eralith Asclepius—then there I would find my next crucible. There I would find the challenges I needed to grow.
As my mind wandered, I heard frantic footsteps on the stairs outside my office. The sound was urgent, hurried, the sound of someone who had been running for a long time and had not stopped to catch their breath.
I raised my head, and the door burst open, revealing a gunmetal-haired girl who was gasping as she launched herself into the seat in front of me.
"T-Tessia?" I asked, taken aback by her sudden appearance. She visited me very rarely at the Company.
Something that had to do with the rivalry between the Vedette Grove and the Grove of the Old Oak—a rivalry started completely by her when she had decided that she would make the Old Oak better than the Vedette I "favoured" with the Company.
I had never understood it, this need she had to compete with me, to prove herself, to carve out a space that was hers and hers alone. But I loved her for it. I loved her stubbornness, her pride, her refusal to be anything less than extraordinary.
"Corvis! There is something... I do not know how to explain it... you need to listen..." Tessia breathed heavily, her chest heaving, her face flushed.
She had probably run across half of Zestier to get here.
"I am listening," I said, my tone steady, calm. "Just take a deep breath and tell me calmly."
Tessia frowned. "You sound like Grandpa."
She then shook her head and slammed her palms on my desk, the impact making the puddle of water from my collapsed Bubblespell ripple. "But Corvis, I found—sort of—something similar to what we saw in the Colour Timberland!"
My eyes widened. "What? Here in Zestier?" I exclaimed, my heart lurching in my chest.
Was Nylith about to send a wave of corrupted mana beasts at the capital? Had the Caduchicil finally decided to strike at the heart of Elenoir? But then why had no one noticed?
Aya and Alea would surely have taken care of such a direct threat, even before we noticed it. They were Lances. They were the kingdom's shield.
"No, that is what I meant by 'sort of,'" Tessia said, shaking her head. "I do not know how to explain it, but it is like I feel it. It is far, but it is there. In the Elshire Forest."
"And you are the only one who feels it?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "How is that possible?"
"Ehm..." Tessia hesitated, and I saw her try to suppress a smug expression. "I went to the Colour Timberland some days back, and I think the Elderwood Guardian there passed something down to me. A sort of Beast Will."
Soleil had told me Tessia was doing something at the Colour Timberland, but I had not imagined this. I had not imagined that she would be brave enough—or foolish enough—to confront an S-Class mana beast on her own.
"Did you try to claim the mana core of that Elderwood Guardian?" I asked, standing from my armchair and leaning toward her, my heart beating like a drum in my chest. "Tessia, are you crazy?!"
My whole life was devoted to protecting my family. To protecting her, more than anyone. And here she was, going behind my back, hunting an Elderwood Guardian, risking her life for something she did not fully understand.
"I did," Tessia said, unable to repress her proud smile as she crossed her arms. A look of defiance settled on her face—the same look she had worn when she was four years old and had declared that she would awaken as a mage, that she would be the youngest in history, that she would prove everyone wrong.
"So what is this feeling?" I asked, forcing myself to stay calm. "And how is it related to what we saw in the Colour Timberland?"
In the back of my mind, I feared that if Tessia had obtained a Beast Will that was corrupted, it might be calling her to more of that Vritra taint. But I suppressed the thought. I had no reason to believe it.
I was just being paranoid. The Vritra had already corrupted so much—I could not let them corrupt my trust in my own sister.
Tessia took my hand then. Her fingers were warm, her grip firm. "We need to go outside for me to show you."
—
We were back in the Royal Palace, the gardens starting to lose their colors as autumn progressed.
The leaves that had once been green were now red and gold and brown, falling in slow spirals to the ground below. The air was crisp, cool, carrying the scent of woodsmoke and earth. Tessia had her wand-sword in one hand, while the blades of grass that made up her grassword twisted around the blade, plant magic giving it a life of its own.
Soleil was present too, perched on one of the many branches of the Watchful Willows that overlooked the palace gardens. Her golden eyes were fixed on Tessia, watching, waiting, her small robin's body still as stone.
"Look closely," Tessia said, her eyes glinting with focus as she planted the tip of her wand-sword in the soft ground.
Berna and I stood back, giving her space. The garden was quiet, the only sounds the rustle of leaves and the distant murmur of the city. I felt mana surge from Tessia's core as she fed it to the ground—a basic usage of plant magic, exactly as all plant mages used it, from Tessia to Alea to the gardeners who tended the palace's flower beds.
But Tessia was not casting any spell. She was not making flowers sprout, not making roots twist and move the ground, not doing any of the things I had seen her do a hundred times before. She was simply... feeding. Pouring her mana into the earth and waiting.
"Ehm... Tessia?" I said after a long moment.
"Shut up," she said, concentrating.
I glanced at Berna, who sat on her haunches, lazily staring at the ground. She was probably thinking about food, or sleep, or whatever other bear activities occupied her mind.
Then I glanced at Soleil, high above, patiently awaiting, like the ever-present sentinel she had always been since I returned from the Red Gorge five years ago.
Then I felt it. The flow of mana from Tessia to the ground inverted itself. The earth—or, better to say, the Elshire Forest itself—was repaying Tessia for her mana. Energy flowed back into her, steady and warm, like a mother's embrace.
"You are storing mana in the forest?" I asked, my eyes wide.
Alea had explained to me that she and many other plant mages used special seeds as emergency mana sources—like elixirs in Sapin.
But those seeds provided sudden bursts of mana, not a steady supply. This was different, it was a relationship of sorts. A symbiosis, yes. A partnership between the princess and the land she was born to protect.
"Yes, I am... wait, here it is!" Tessia exclaimed all of a sudden. "It is like a pull. I feel the Forest itself is asking me—us—to help it."
Not knowing what to do, I looked up at Soleil. The robin nodded back at me, her golden eyes bright. I clicked my tongue. You are not helping, you godly robin. She probably thought I already had a plan, that I had anticipated this, that I was simply asking for confirmation rather than guidance.
Then Tessia stood up and took my hand.
"Corvis, we need to do something! It is asking for us!" Her voice was serious, her tone the same as when she made bold declarations at her social gatherings, when she told Mom or Dad or Grandpa or me how much she loved us.
"Asking, Tessia?" I wondered. "What do you mean by asking?"
"The Forest is calling us, Corvis. You need to trust me!" Tessia exclaimed. "I can feel the call of the woods. It is like a... a giant web, all interconnected."
She crouched down and caressed a blade of grass, using wind magic to make it move like a dancer. The grass swayed, twisted, bent to her will, and I felt the faint pulse of her mana traveling through it.
"If I stimulate this blade of grass, for example, I can feel that branch over there—where Coco is!" Tessia gestured to the high branch where Soleil was perched, and its leaves shook, moved by an invisible gust of magical wind that resonated with Tessia's mana signature.
"You can make spells travel through plants?" I asked, the implications cascading through my mind. That was an application of plant magic I had never heard of. That was an application of plant magic that could change everything.
Tessia nodded, her eyes bright with excitement. "Which means I can connect with all the plants of the Forest. Corvis, I can feel the source of whatever caused what we saw in the Colour Timberland. We can stop whatever illness is burdening the Elshire."
Finding a single elf in the Elshire Forest was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. But if you had a metal detector that could locate that needle—if you had a way to sense the corruption, to track it, to follow it to its source—then the haystack became irrelevant.
"Where is the Forest calling you?" I asked, taking Tessia's shoulders. My hands were steady, but my heart was not.
If Tessia could give me the hint I had been desperately needing to find the Caduchicil, then I was going to take the chance immediately. A Vritra-backed cult could not be allowed to live.
Not in Elenoir. Not in Dicathen. Not in the whole world.
"West," Tessia said. "On the Grand Mountains. There is a city there."
"A city in the Grand Mountains?" I echoed. I had studied most of the cities of Elenoir, and the Grand Mountains only had a few small villages of shepherds, nothing more.
Perfect for hiding. Away from civilization—be it elven, human, dwarven, or otherwise.
"Yes!" Tessia said, her voice rising with certainty. "That is where the Forest calls!"