Corvis Eralith
The Beginning After The End never did Xyrus City justice. Never.
I had read the descriptions a hundred times, had memorized every passing mention of the floating island and I had built my understanding of this place from scattered details and fleeting impressions.
But reading was not seeing; the words on the page were shadows, nothing more than pale imitations of the reality that now surrounded me.
The city built on top of the floating island of the Ancient Mages was a true magical metropolis, the kind of thing you would expect when visiting a city famous for the most important magic school of the whole continent.
It was everything I had imagined and more: a city spanning memoir of the lost brilliance of the Djinns, a ghostly fragment of their civilization that had somehow survived the genocide that had erased everything else.
Everywhere around me, the most recent inventions of Sapinese artificers were displayed in everyday use.
I watched a merchant use a humming devices to lift crates twice his size. I saw street vendors cooking with stoves that produced no smoke, their flames contained within glass spheres that glowed with a steady, controlled light.
I passed a group of children playing with toys that floated and spun, their laughter carrying across the plaza like music.
I had also read there was a complicated system, recovered from ancient Djinnic Manatech, that avoided fires from catching and spreading hidden below Xyrus City's streets, embedded into the very island itself.
I was surrounded by the noises of people as the main plaza of Xyrus City welcomed me when I arrived through the portal in the Magic Capital of the World.
I was Finn Warend today; the transition from Vildorial's oppressive heat and stone to Xyrus's open sky and crisp air was jarring, almost disorienting.
One moment I was underground, surrounded by the echoes of dwarven industry; the next, I was standing under an endless blue sky, the wind whipping at my clothes.
What I immediately felt on my skin was the fresh weather of the floating island. It being so high in the sky made Xyrus City quite windy, with nothing up here to block the air currents.
The name of the plaza where I appeared was Mana Square, where currently hundreds of people were reunited; the energy of the crowd was infectious, a hum of activity that seemed to pulse through the very stones beneath my feet.
I could feel the mana in the air, thick and rich, like the atmosphere of the Hallowed Hollow, but magnified.
This was the same plaza where, in another timeline, Arthur had witnessed first-hand the proclamation of the Tri-Union.
I was walking the very cobblestones where The Beginning After The End had become what it was. It could be said that this was the pavement upon which I had built the mental framework for all my actions.
It was a strange feeling, truth to be told. I had known I was inside a novel since I was born, but being here in Xyrus City made that feeling truly alienating.
The stories I had read, the events I had memorized, the futures I was trying to prevent: they all converged on or started from this place in one way or another.
This was the crucible where so many destinies had been forged, where the fate of Dicathen had been decided in a timeline that no longer existed.
I met with many characters from that original reality: from my parents and Tessia to the Twin Horns and Olfred, from Windsom Indrath to Chul Asclepius, from Grandpa to Gideon.
But none of them had felt quite like this. Standing in Mana Square, surrounded by the ghosts of a story that had never been told, I felt the weight of my own displacement more acutely than ever before.
This is almost like meeting Arthur in person, I said in my mind. Almost.
Again, I thought about how Agrona had managed to attempt the Legacy's reincarnation. Was King Grey truly reincarnated miles upon miles westward of Sapin's coast, in Alacrya? The thought was a splinter in my mind, a question I couldn't answer.
If Grey existed, if he had been reborn in Alacrya as Arthur had been in Dicathen, then what did that mean for the world I was trying to save? What did it mean for me?
"Young Finn."
Taking me away from my thoughts was the voice of Himes—Gideon's moustached butler, who would have eventually become a servant of the Leywin Clan in the novel.
"Master Bastius sent me to pick you up," Himes said, his voice carrying the same measured professionalism I had come to expect from him.
"Oh, Mr. Himes, right?" I asked, even though I perfectly knew who he was. Fate itself had put that knowledge inside me through the novel. "Thanks for being my guide."
"The pleasure is mine," Himes replied, a faint smirk playing at the corners of his mouth beneath his impressive moustache. "Master Gideon truly wants to meet you in a proper environment."
"Which I interpret as his laboratory, right?" I asked, and Himes nodded, his expression one of satisfied approval.
"You seem to understand the man," Himes commented as he turned to lead me through the busy streets of Xyrus.
As we walked, my gaze was locked on the hill at the centre of the floating island, where a massive complex of buildings stood, surrounded by tall gates.
The architecture was unlike anything I had seen in Elenoir or Darv—a blend of Sapinese functionality and Djinnic elegance that created something entirely new. The spires reached toward the sky like grasping fingers, and the walls seemed to shimmer with a faint, protective glow.
"That is Xyrus Academy, young Finn," Himes confirmed my doubts as he noticed my attention being taken by the most important academy of Dicathen.
It was a campus that could have made the best universities of Earth have a run for their money.
It was the most envied city in Dicathen for this reason; just how many great mages could Xyrus Academy produce? The thought was dizzying, a reminder of the vast gulf between this place and the rest of the continent.
And all of this was made by an Alacryan. Director Cynthia Goodsky.
I would need to speak with her soon. The thought settled in my chest like a stone, heavy and cold. If she was still loyal to Agrona, then everything I was building was in danger.
If she had truly defected like in the novel, then she might be one of my greatest allies. The only way to know was to find out for myself.
"I guessed so..." I replied to Himes, while I gently crouched to let a fatty, cute, and aquamarine frog with short malachite horns leap from my hands.
The Portal Frog (I still needed to come up with a proper scientific name) landed on the cobblestones with a soft plop, its bulging eyes fixed on me.
Reach the campus and settle somewhere safe, I mentally ordered the Portal Frog. And try to get as close as possible to Cynthia Goodsky's office.
It had taken me more time than I wanted to admit to be able to make Portal Frogs.
They were artificial mana beasts crafted by me with REstringify, REmould, and REtrocurrent at the same time: the first of the REbelves, using the ancient elven word for beast.
These Portal Frogs could transport me from place to place.
Just like the rushing river of time, they would swallow me whole and spit me out on the other side; all powered by the teleportation spellform Avicenna had taught me.
The frog hopped away, disappearing into the crowd, and I felt a faint pulse of connection through the double-helix string of Fate that bound us together.
I continued to follow Himes through Xyrus City's streets.
The floating town looked like a city from the Renaissance: its layout still medieval, but the technology was more advanced.
The buildings were a patchwork of old and new, ancient stonework standing alongside gleaming new constructions, each one testifying the centuries of development that had shaped this place.
We passed in front of the large building that was the guildhall of the Adventurer's Guild here in Xyrus. I kept my gaze downcast as we walked, not wanting to be recognized by the organization whose monopoly I had been usurping with the Unraveler's Company.
I didn't know what the Adventurer's Guild would do if they discovered that Finn Warend, great-nephew of the main financier of the Company, was walking straight in front of one their main bases.
For once, I didn't want to discover it. Not today, at least.
"Where does Artificer Gideon live?" I asked Himes, taking my eyes off the Adventurers flowing in and out of the building.
"Down in Artificers Road, young Finn," Himes explained, his voice carrying a hint of pride, as if the name itself was a declaration of importance.
"Artificers Road?" I echoed, repressing a laugh. "Quite original for Gideon to live there. It's a fun coincidence."
As we closed in on Gideon's home and laboratory, I took out from my storage ring a few blueprints I had made.
They each displayed a different Djinnic Lifework Avicenna had been so kind to teach me, and I had methodically written them down. The diagrams were precise, the notes meticulous, and I felt a surge of pride at the sight of them.
I wanted to ask Gideon to develop them for the Interdicathian, showcasing those projects to all of Dicathen as cooperation between him and me, dwarven and human minds united together.
By doing that, I could also avoid presenting myself as Finn Warend—Gideon would be in my place—so that I could do whatever Grandpa wanted me to do at the first international fair in Dicathian history.
Himes knocked on the door of an unremarkable house, which looked pretty much the same as the other houses of Artificers Road. It was deliberately modest, a calculated choice designed to deflect attention.
The door creaked and opened slightly, and from the fissure, Gideon's head appeared. He looked at Himes with an annoyed expression.
"Oh, Himes..." he muttered, his voice carrying the weariness of a man who had been interrupted too many times. Then his eyes landed on me, and that annoyance was replaced the gleam of a craftsman who had just spotted a new tool.
"Oh, and Tinkerfool too!"
"T-Tinkerfool?!" I echoed, the word catching in my throat. "How do you know that name?!"
Tinkerfool was the stupid name Hornfels Earthborn had given me when I had "challenged" him during the Darffest. I had hoped it would die a quiet death, forgotten in the chaos of the competition.
"I made some researches about you, Wonderboy," Gideon said, opening the door and gesturing for us to come inside. Once he did so, the artificer immediately turned back and retreated into the depths of his home. "Follow me."
The doorway swallowed me, and I stepped into the mind of Dicathen's self-proclaimed greatest genius.
—
Gideon's home looked like what Leonardo Da Vinci's own house could have looked like, only lacking the painting endeavours of the Florentine inventor.
The comparison came unbidden, a ghost of a memory from a world that became everyday less and less clear, and I found myself wondering what the Reinassance scientist would have thought of this place.
However, I wouldn't call Gideon the true owner of this house, because the true owner was chaos itself.
Every surface was a battlefield of half-finished projects, abandoned tools, artifacts, beast cores devoid of mana and scattered notes.
The walls seemed to lean inward, as if they were trying to contain the sheer volume of invention that had been unleashed within them.
Order seemed to not exist in Gideon's mind; everywhere I looked, I found objects and stuff that had no reason to be together.
And yet, despite the clear confusion of the place, there remained a certain logic in it. A pattern, buried beneath the layers of neglect and frantic creativity.
Here was a room dedicated to storage, with crates and chests scattered all across the floor and the shelves weirdly placed against the walls. The boxes were missed any sort of labeling and I caught glimpses of strange components spilling from their containers.
Here was another room dedicated to notes and brainstorming. The walls were all decorated by countless papers, full of unreadable words that might have been a child's doodles for how cramped those words had been written, leaving almost no white space between them.
And here was another dedicated to alchemy, with countless glass containers displayed on the tables. Beakers and flasks of every size and shape caught the light, their contents ranging from clear liquids to viscous, bubbling concoctions.
We eventually arrived at what looked like Gideon's main study room. A desk at the centre dominated the space, and dust created a cloud in the room that seemed to have been accumulating for years. The light from the windows was diffused, softened by the layers of grime that coated the glass.
Gideon coughed as he waved his hands around, trying to dispel the cloud that his own entrance had stirred.
"Himes, why don't you ever clean this room?!" Gideon shouted, shaking his head to get dust away from his face.
"Because you yourself prohibit access to your study, Master Bastius," Himes professionally answered, his voice carrying the patient resignation of who had answered this question many times before.
"Right..." Gideon said, his shoulders sagging slightly. "Then leave me alone with Wonderboy here."
"As you wish," Himes said, giving a curt bow before leaving me alone with the unhinged human inventor.
I used Ars Terramorph to compact the powder in the air into a small pebble of solid matter.
The cloud of dust coalesced between my cupped hands, and I passed the product of my magical cleaning—something I had learnt observing Alea, who used plant magic in quite creative ways when it came to her job as a maid—to Gideon.
"I should have hired you as a butler instead of my apprentice," Gideon smirked, his voice carrying a hint of genuine admiration despite his teasing tone.
"I am not your apprentice, Artificer Gideon," I pointed out, keeping my voice level. "Should I remind you of our accord?"
"No, no... you merchants and all your adherence to deals and contracts," Gideon sighed, sitting on a chair that groaned under his weight. "You are quite the unnerving bunch at times."
"I pride myself in being the least unnerving of merchants," I lied/joked, taking a seat myself.
Without all the dust making a grey cloud in this room, Gideon's study now looked a little bit decent, something one could expect from the supposed most intelligent man in the continent.
"I want to speak with you of something before you say any fool-tinkering stuff of yours," Gideon said, leaning forward. He enjoyed this Tinkerfool thing, didn't he? "The Interdicathian—I am sure that great-uncle of yours mentioned it to you."
"I know you are one of its promoters, Master Bastius," I said, my voice carefully neutral.
"Yes, I need you to help me for it," Gideon said, biting his lower lip and swallowing his pride as he said it.
The gesture was comical to watch—a man who had spent his entire life believing he was the smartest person in the room, forced to ask for help from a child. "What do you think?"
"I am all for it, Master Bastius," I replied, a genuine smile spreading across my face.
—
I have had a very productive talk with Gideon.
The Sapinese inventor, after much grumbling and several pointed comments about how "a child shouldn't be teaching a grown man," finally agreed to take a look at the blueprints I brought with me.
He would see if they were worthy to work on (they were, and he knew it, but he was a bit too prideful to admit so).
He would work on them and bring them to life.
Now—
The Portal Frog I left at Xyrus Academy hacked me back up, depositing me right onto the pristine grounds of Dicathen's greatest school. The transition was sudden, jarring, a moment of darkness and disorientation that left me gasping on the manicured grass.
Behind me, the small, horn-crowned REbelf croaked, its throat puffing as its tiny malachite protrusions caught the light. It looked almost proud of itself, its bulging eyes fixed on me with smug satisfaction.
I wiped myself clean with a sudden cocoon of wind magic that flared around me and dissipated a second later, then glared at the frog.
"Don't look at me like that, teleportation Kermit. I felt like I was passing through the afterlife—well, I was... technically speaking."
Describing how it felt being swallowed and spat back by a Portal Frog was complex. It was similar to the Warworn Rapids, but less metaphysical and more, well, physical.
I wasn't in my Soul-Body when I traveled with REtrocurrent through Portal Frogs; I was flesh and bones, and yet I wasn't completely physical either.
I felt the rattling of the river, the way it tugged at the edges of my consciousness, but not the pain that should have followed. It was like a dream of drowning from which I always woke gasping.
Anyway, I clapped my hands together and used REmould to change aspect. But I became neither Corvis nor Finn nor Eralith. Instead, I became human.
It was strange being human (again?) I was born an elf, and since my earliest childhood I had always witnessed disdain for humankind in Elenoir.
From the veterans of the Leafguard and the Royal Police, to the civilians of Zestier, to even my own Dad: the prejudice was a scar on the soul of my people.
I needed a disguise that wouldn't catch the eye too much as I approached the office of Director Goodsky.
For that, a human was the best choice.
Moreover, if Cynthia Goodsky was truly an unrepentant Alacryan spy, unlike the timeline I knew, going to her as Corvis or Finn would have been like painting in broad strokes a target sign on my back.
Checking my surroundings—one of the many inner gardens of the school—to make sure no one saw me being spat out by a frog, I moved.
Leveraging Elder Rahdeas's extensive network, I'd secured a proper Xyrus Academy uniform. Retrieving it from my storage ring, I threw it on in a matter of seconds with a sleek glove to cover my Servo-Hand.
My hair, now as jet-black as Aurora's, had grown far longer than I usually kept it: shoulder-length (whether as Corvis, Eralith, or the longer style I'd recently adopted as Finn Warend too).
My hair now cascaded well past my shoulders, falling from the sides of my head in precise, curtain-like waves.
The skin tone instead gained rich olive undertones, a middle ground between my usual pale elven skin and the dwarven bronze of Finn. It was a warm colour speaking the history of humanity in this world.
My eyes shifted to a stormy, cloud-grey, and I donned a pair of glasses with green, vaguely dodecahedral lenses. I had crafted them myself by fusing four types of Green Gems Evascir had given me: Jade, Malachite, Emerald, and Peridot.
Because each gem was attuned to a different elemental mana, the thin lenses dramatically heightened my mana senses—acting as a sort of poor-man's version of Realmheart.
Usually, I only wore them during experiments in my Awareroom.
Shielded by my green lenses, I cast my gaze skyward, tracking my scout above.
A lone bird swept in wide circles over Xyrus Academy: a simple white dove, really, save for the faint aquamarine plumes dusting her wingtips and tail.
Chantelle Asclepius, the Phoenix I'd posted at the Bough of the Port in the Arnocue Grove, was riding the wind currents overhead. In the novel, Cynthia's bond Avier held some obscure connection to the Asclepius Clan.
As their Highprince, if I could turn that mysterious history into leverage, I wouldn't let the opportunity slip away.
I was near the faculty offices of Xyrus Academy, located in the large tower at the centre of the magic university.
As I activated Inner Current, the Trucewater flooding my nerves, a perfect map of the school appeared in my head.
It was something REtrocurrent granted me, just like I had done in Vildorial when I retrieved Gideon's Combustium. It seemed my obsession with city maps (and maps in general) paid off in the end, granting me a strange Insight over them.
If I focused, it was almost like I had a "minimap" of sorts, like in Earthen videogames. Only that instead of it being in the corner of my vision, it was shown to me like something brought to shore by the tide of Inner Current.
Walking, I spotted a group of students being chastised by a professor. I didn't recognize them from the novel. They were just faces in a crowd, young mages learning their craft, unaware of the wars that were coming.
With REmould, I manipulated my mana signature, making sure that not even an expert mage like Cynthia Goodsky herself could sense me.
After my accident with Gilbert (him not believing how strong I truly was) I had spent considerable time trying to master my control over REmould's innate cloaking abilities. I succeeded in due time.
Really, what was happening to my control over magic? Why was it so... efficient?
I shook away the intrusive thought as the group of students walked away, heads low after being chastised. Seizing the opportunity, I entered the faculty offices of Xyrus Academy.
The corridors were huge, doors on all sides leading to the personal offices of many professors whose names I didn't recognize.
Cynthia Goodsky's own room was at the top floor, overlooking all of Xyrus Academy and the floating island itself.
I walked quietly, appreciating the feeling of being in a school. It was such a mundane feeling, it made me feel at ease... at Peace—it was a reminder of a world that still did not know war.
I made to turn to my right, taking the first flight of stairs for the upper floors, when I felt a person approaching from that same direction.
I halted before I could bump into them. Even before they came into view, their mana signature preceded them: a dark orange core, radiating distinct fire and wind affinities.
Turning the corner, stopping right in front of me, Claire Bladeheart looked at me with curious eyes.
She looked younger than when she first appeared in the novel. sShe should have been in her second or third year of school at this point in the timeline.
"Hi there," Claire said, her tone friendly and open. "Are you a first year?"
"Y-yes," I replied, feigning the shyness of a first-year student of Xyrus Academy—someone still older than me by two whole years, by the way. "I am a scholar mage student!"
There were two types of students at Xyrus Academy: scholar and battle mages.
The first focused on the didactical aspect of magic, while the latter—those that made Xyrus Academy truly famous for its quality of teachings—focused on the, alas, more respected and sought-after side of magic: fighting.
"You want me to show you around?" Claire immediately proposed, her desire to help a supposed underclassman admirable, but very undesired right now. "The administrative wing can feel quite jarring at first. The first time I was here, I almost got lost."
"No, thanks, I am sure I can find the way on my own," I said, quickly moving out of Claire Bladeheart's reach. "But thanks for your concern!"
—
As I walked, my thoughts turned to another crucial character from the novel I would inevitably need to meet: Kai Crestless, the Alacryan spy posing as a Xyrus Academy student.
The name surfaced from the depths of my memory like a bubble rising through deep water, carrying with it all the weight of the story I had read in another life.
If Claire was a third-year at this point in time, then Kai should currently be a first-year; still relatively unknown to most Dicathians, still waiting for the moment when he would strike.
A dark thought surfaced immediately after.
Eliminating him right now was the cleanest option if I simply wanted him gone. One death and one less knife at the back of everything I was trying to build.
He's a small fish, Corvis, I reminded myself. Killing him won't yield any real benefits. Alacrya can easily replace a twelve-year-old. The thought tasted bitter, a reminder that the war I was preparing for was bigger than any single life.
A dead spy was simply a hole that would be filled by another, one I wouldn't know of from the novel.
But capturing him? That seemed more useful. A captured spy could be useful. For that, I would need the Director's help.
I was in front of the large doors leading to Cynthia Goodsky's office, my mind working on all the possible outcomes of this encounter. Each scenario unfolded before me like a branching path, a maze of possibilities that stretched into an uncertain future.
She is still Grandpa's friend, Corvis, I reassured myself. If she were still loyal to Alacrya, what reason would she have had to become friends with him in the first place?
I tried to overhear what was going on inside, but a spell was preventing any eavesdropping. The magic was subtle, elegant. If I remembered correctly, Cynthia Goodsky was both a wind mage and a sound deviant—these kinds of spells were her speciality.
The air around the office hummed with a barely perceptible vibration, a barrier that would turn normal attempts at listening into meaningless static.
There were some fancy benches with soft velvet cushions in front of the Director's office—the same thing you would expect from the principal of any school in any world.
I decided to sit down and wait for the current appointment of the Director to end before I made my move.
Oh, this is actually comfortable, I pleasantly noted in my head as I settled on the cushioned bench.
While waiting, I rapidly checked the contents of my storage ring, planning my escape route if things went south.
Swallowing the C-Pill is still my best option, I rationalised. No consequences if I discover Cynthia Goodsky is the most zealous of the Alacryans in this timeline.
The large ebony doors, trimmed with silver and steel, opened wide, and another familiar face from the story engraved in my very soul left the room, accompanied by a face I preferred I would have never seen again.
Look who I meet again... Sebastian Wykes.
The court magician of the Glayder family, with that smug expression on his face, was accompanying one of the two royal children of the human kingdom.
He looked exactly as I remembered from the Red Gorge: the same hollow cheeks, the same grey hair, the same eyes that burned with the hunger of someone who believed the universe owed them everything.
"Thanks for the talk, Director Goodsky," Curtis Glayder, Prince of Sapin and heir to the throne of the human kingdom, thanked as green motes of mana coalesced at the edges of the double doors.
Wind magic surged from the corridor back toward the office, the spell creating a sucking effect that closed the two ebony doors, but that seemed to have no effect on people—Cynthia Goodsky lived true to her name; she was good with her magic.
"Y-your Highness!" I exclaimed, faking shock and sudden fervour at seeing the heir of what was supposed to be my nation in this human disguise.
I stood up and bowed (clearly not parodying Alwyn with me).
"Hi," Curtis replied. The mahogany-haired prince looked back at me, a pleased expression on his face at seeing me bow. "Do I know you? I think I have seen you around."
"I would never expect His Highness to recognize me," I said, cringing inwardly but keeping up the ruse outwardly. "I am just a first year."
"Prince Curtis, you should not waste your time with plebians," Sebastian said, not deigning me with even a glance—of which I was more than happy.
Curtis gave me one last look, pondering Sebastian's words. Something flickered in his eyes, but he said nothing.
"I hope to see you again," Curtis said, taking his way with Sebastian following suit.
Once they were gone and I was sure I was alone in the corridor, I finally knocked on the double ebony doors. The sound was small, almost timid, a stark contrast to the weight of everything I was about to risk.
"Enter," the elderly voice of Cynthia Goodsky echoed as another gust of wind opened the doors again.
The voice was warm and welcoming, the voice of a dedicated school principal, not that of a spy plotting for her dark gods.
I stepped inside.