Corvis Eralith
Another week dissolved into the ceaseless, silent flow of time, another seven grains of sand lost in the bottom of an hourglass I couldn't stop watching.
My "connection" with Rahdeas Warend had solidified from a tense, verbal gambit into something resembling a working relationship, a thin wire of communication strung across a chasm of mutual suspicion and unspoken agendas.
The dwarven elder, true to his merchant's instincts and his stated goals, thanks to his talk with Grandpa was beginning the delicate work of weaving his commercial networks into the fabric of Zestier.
The great portal at the city's heart—a relic of the murdered Djinn, like all such portals, a monument to a genocide that served as convenient infrastructure—now hummed with a permanent link to Vildorial in Darv.
Goods, ideas, and the first tentative threads of a new interdependence began to flow.
But this progress shone a glaring, uncomfortable light on a problem I had foolishly, hopefully, ignored: Elenoir itself. Or more precisely, my father.
The cold realization had been dawning on me for months, but now it was inescapable.
In the story I knew, Alduin Eralith's willingness to even consider the Tri-Union wasn't born from strategic genius or sudden altruism.
It was sparked by a single, irreducible fact: a human boy had saved his daughter's life. Arthur Leywin, by pulling Tessia from the clutches of slavers, had become a living, breathing bridge between a king's entrenched hatred and the possibility of something broader.
That personal debt, that moment of heart-stopping gratitude, had been the crack in the dam of my father's bitterness, allowing the later, logical arguments about Alacrya to flood through and permit the Tri-Union to form naturally to face the threat of the other continent.
Without Arthur, that crack didn't exist. The dam was intact. My father's diplomacy was rooted in cold necessity and old wounds, not the thaw of personal revelation.
I was certain he, like the Glayders and even the self-interested Greysunders—despite the hand of the Vritra moving them—would eventually bow to the existential threat of Agrona's legions.
They would unite because a knife at the throat makes strange bedfellows. But that wasn't the unity I needed. That was a unity born of desperation and orchestrated from above by the Asuras, who would descend as puppet-masters, ready to sacrifice every piece on the board—every elf, human, and dwarf—in their celestial chess game with the Vritra.
We would be united only to die more efficiently for Kezess Indrath's pride.
Dicathen had to unite from within. It had to be a choice, a construction, however messy, built on shared interest and nascent trust, not on the point of a spear held by a basilisk or a dragon.
It was the only way we might retain some shred of autonomy, some chance to fight for ourselves, not just as pawns.
And for that daunting, perhaps impossible project, Rahdeas Warend, for all the shadows that clung to his name in my memory, was suddenly indispensable.
I didn't know his ultimate agenda. His motives were a locked chest wrapped in poetic verse. But for now, our goals—a stronger, interconnected Dicathen—aligned. That had to be enough.
I would work with the potential devil, because the confirmed gods were already plotting our extinction.
Rahdeas needed to stay alive, to keep building his bridges of trade and influence.
This long-term political dread was a constant hum in the background. The immediate, screaming priority was Sylvia. For her, time was not a river but a noose, tightening with every sunset.
Seeking a futile reprieve from the circling thoughts, I found myself deep in the Elshire Forest, in the permitted zone surrounding the ancient Watchful Willow that housed the Hallowed Hollow.
After a year of pleading and demonstrating cautious progress, she had finally allowed me to wander its immediate vicinities alone—or as alone as I ever was with a Lance shadowing my every step.
The rationale was training: I needed to become accustomed to moving through untamed wilderness, to reading the land, to surviving without palace walls.
The Elshire was a gentle nursery compared to the savage throat of the Beast Glades, but it was a start.
My body, however, rebelled against the very concept.
I faced a gnarled, moss-slick root that barred my path, a natural step steeper than my knees were high.
Grunting, I clawed at the damp bark, my small arms shaking with the effort to haul myself up. I tumbled over the top more than climbed it, landing in a heap of damp leaves on the other side. The contrast was a physical ache.
At my age, in the novel, Arthur moved through these same trees like a specter, a shadow with preternatural grace, his augmenter's strength and battle-honed instincts turning the forest into an extension of his will.
I, a conjurer with a solid red-stage core and the muscle memory of a pampered prince, struggled to walk.
The differences between an augmenter's path and a conjurer's at this nascent stage were a canyon. My Pseudo-Mana Rotation, that crude, self-taught trickle of technique, could help fuel a minor augmentation, pushing my strength from that of a toddler to perhaps a wiry ten-year-old.
It was a significant leap, but it still left me pathetically, laughably weak. I wasn't seeking to lift boulders; I needed to be able to outrun a Wyrm's breath, to scale a volcanic gorge, to survive a single glancing blow.
The intellectual consolation—that the gap between augmenter and conjurer blurred into insignificance toward the white core and beyond—was cold comfort.
It spoke of a distant summit when I was still stumbling at the base of the mountain, with a avalanche clock ticking down above me. If only I had been reborn earlier… The thought was a useless, poisonous weed.
More time wouldn't have solved Arthur's absence. It just would have made my own inadequacy less immediately fatal.
I pushed on, the ever-present Elshire Mist coiling around me like a living entity. It was different from normal fog—thicker, softer, holding a faint, magical luminescence.
As an elf, my eyes were subtly attuned to it; I could navigate its veils where a human would be utterly blind. My theorizing mind, always desperate for understanding, gnawed at the phenomenon.
This mist wasn't water vapor. It felt like… rarefied mana. Ambient energy that had cooled, condensed, and taken on this peculiar, persistent form. It had to be diffuse, otherwise the very air here would feel as mana-rich as the Hallowed Hollow.
If I had Realmheart, I thought with a pang of longing for Arthur's gift, I could see the truth of it. But I didn't. I had only questions and the pressing need to put one foot in front of the other.
My pathetic "jog" complete, I returned to the clearing before the monolithic Watchful Willow, my chest heaving, my legs trembling from frustrated impotence. A whisper of air, and Alea materialized beside me, landing without a sound.
"You were following me this whole time?" I asked, though it wasn't a question.
"Oh, I wouldn't be doing my job properly if I was so easy to spot," she replied, her tone light, joking. It was our familiar dance.
"Yeah… the job of a maid," I said, the dryness in my voice a deliberate prod.
I would make her admit she was a Lance to me, openly, even before my father deemed it time to reveal the existence of Lances. It was a petty goal amidst the apocalypse, but it felt like a step toward shredding one layer of the secrecy suffocating me.
"Precisely!" she chirped, her smile unwavering.
Frustration sought an outlet. "Alea," I began, shifting the subject to another of my failings. "What kind of weapon do you think I could use?"
We both knew the dismal truth. Swords felt like dead weight in my hands, their balance foreign and threatening. The very act of gripping a weapon with intent sent a jolt of visceral wrongness through me, a deep-seated recoil that had nothing to do with my age or magic type.
It felt… blasphemous. A memory of a different life, perhaps? Or simply the soul of a fraud rejecting the tools of a warrior?
"No one," Alea said, not unkindly. "You can be a spectacular mage without ever drawing a blade."
Yeah, the voice in my head sneered. But being a spectacular mage is a luxury for peacetime scholars and court duelists. I need to be a soldier. A killer.
If my goal were understanding, I'd be inside a library, not here in the mud, plotting how to steal fire from a dragon. But I couldn't say that.
To her, I was still just a bright, impatient and too curious boy wanting to emulate his legendary grandfather.
"But if I truly, truly wanted to?" I pressed, layering my voice with a child's stubborn whine, a mask that was becoming easier and more hateful to wear.
Alea paused, giving the question genuine thought. "A cane," she said finally.
"Don't play with me," I pouted, the expression feeling like a crack in my skull.
"I couldn't be more serious, Your Highness." Her tone was instructive now. "Canes were once common among elven nobility for self-defense, a practice that faded after your grandfather's reforms. Or so I was told."
A flicker of genuine surprise cut through my self-pity.
"Oh really? And how exactly does a maid know of this… peculiar bit of history?"
"Ehm… I am just passionate about the history of my employers!" she deflected smoothly, the Lance perfectly hidden behind the maid's earnest facade.
A cane. The idea was absurd, yet it resonated oddly. What had Grandpa done to change an entire culture's relationship to weapons? His reign was the longest in our history, a era of such profound change it had reshaped Elenoir's very soul.
Much like England's Victorian era on Earth, Elenoir had its own "Virionian" age—one that, in many ways, still endured.
Grandpa's influence remained vast, even if it was no longer overtly political. And when you considered that he would eventually become the Commander of the Tri-Union… it became clear: without Arthur, Grandpa was the true living symbol of Dicathen.
"Did mentioning Elder Virion make you curious?" Alea asked, perceptive as ever. "Why don't you ask him yourself? I'm sure he has many stories."
"Maybe when I'm older…" I deflected, the irony bitter. I was running out of 'older'. "Anyway, how could I procure a cane for myself?"
"His Highness is asking for weapons!" she exclaimed in mock scandal. "I must be the worst maid in history."
I preferred you when you were all stern Lance and silent competence, I thought wearily. The playful maid was a mask that reminded me how completely I was still seen as a child.
After her performance, she gave a serious answer.
"House Chaffer still retains the tradition. They use canes to this day."
House Chaffer. The name was a cornerstone of elven military history, our most stalwart and ancient allies.
"I will see what I can do," I said, a new thread of possibility weaving into my tangled plans. "I'll bring Alwyn with me."
Alea turned, her playful demeanor vanishing. Her gaze sharpened. "Is that some way to make it up to me?"
The question was quiet, but it carried the weight of the unspoken pact between us—my friendship with her brother in exchange for her tutelage.
"No, it's not," I answered truthfully, meeting her eyes. "But Alwyn would surely like to meet a military house."
I had learned this about him. His dream wasn't of magic or glory, but of the solid, protective authority of a royal guard. I understood it instantly. It was the same desperate need for agency, for a strength that could shield others from the chaos of the world.
My chaos was prophetic; his, I suspected, was the memory of a personal, devastating loss.
Then, the thought I'd been wrestling with spilled out, half-formed, a test of the waters. "I was also thinking about making him awaken, too…"
The air in the clearing changed. It didn't move; it solidified. For a fraction of a second, the gentle, omnipresent pressure of Alea's concealed power vanished, replaced by an absolute, crushing dominance.
It was the feeling of standing at the bottom of the ocean, with the entire weight of the abyss suddenly focused on you. My breath stopped. My heart stuttered.
Every cell in my body screamed in primal terror. It was over in an instant, the pressure receding as quickly as it came, but the aftershock left me frozen, my veins running with ice.
"No." Her voice was a flat, absolute decree, stripped of all pretense. It was the voice of the Lance, the sovereign weapon. "I will do anything for you, Your Highness. My loyalty isn't in question. But not this."
As quickly as it had appeared, the terrifying aura was gone, folded back into her flawless control. But the look in her blue eyes was now one of raw, haunted guilt—and an iron resolve that told me this was a line I could not cross.
The confrontation left me reeling. I wanted my family safe. I wanted Tessia to enjoy a carefree childhood.
And part of me had reasoned that by sharing the method of early awakening—a secret that could, on a mass scale, potentially narrow the catastrophic power gap between Dicathen and Alacrya—I wasn't being selfish.
I was being… strategic. A benefactor. I was offering Alwyn the power to defy whatever fate had taken his parents.
But Alea's reaction was a bucket of glacial reality. Was it truly an act of benevolence? Or was I, once again, playing with forces I didn't understand, treating a person as an experiment, a potential asset in my war?
The eyes of Epheotus were always watching. What if my meddling drew their gaze to Alwyn? What if Agrona, whose networks were surely already embedded in Dicathen, learned of this? Would he see it as a curiosity… or a threat to be eliminated?
My attempt to help could be a death sentence.
And Alwyn… in the story I remembered, he was dead. A footnote to Alea's tragedy. Magic could give him a chance. But I didn't know how he died. Was it sickness? An accident? An attack? Without knowing, was I offering a solution to the wrong problem?
The right, the moral answer, whispered a voice that felt increasingly alien, was to ask Alwyn himself. To present the danger, the pain, the world-altering burden of it, and let him choose. But he was four.
He was mature, yes, weathered by a grief I could only guess at, but he was still a child. How could anyone, especially a child, consent to a choice that would irrevocably change their world and paint a target on their back?