Elsier arrived in the mortal world lying on his back, submerged in twelve inches of dark water. Thrashing to his feet, he found himself at the center of a pond about five yards across, surrounded on all sides by reeds and long grass. A pair of goats watched him from one edge of the pond, their jaws hanging open in confusion at the spirit who had just emerged out of nowhere.
Nearby, Meredith was also climbing to her feet.
Elsier might have felt sodden and polluted, but of the two of them, Meredith was worse off.
As a spirit, Elsier could travel bodily between the spirit and mortal worlds, but Meredith could travel in spirit only. When she'd visited Cradle Mountain Peak, her soul had broken away from her body to travel through the spirit portal, along with any spiritual possessions she was carrying, such as beast cores. Her temporarily lifeless body would have stayed behind, here, in the mud.
She must have been stewing there for at least an hour.
Her clothes were ruined, soaked through with pond scum and dotted with bugs, her skin was patchy with dirt and algae, and her hair was tangled with weeds.
As she stood up, she tore the ruined lace bonnet from her head, throwing it down into the water. A second later, a terrified fish flopped out of her hair and back into the safety of the water. She shook her head, and her mud-matted hair fell in waves down her back.
As far as Elsier knew, mages typically had areas specially prepared for the purpose. The custodians of Cradle Mountain Peak had built a spirit gate based on elemental water energy, and visiting mages usually used a small stone pool or large metal basin as entrance points. At worst, they might use a bath.
Any of the other options would have been safer, more private, and cleaner than a muddy pond in the middle of a field.
“So, you used a pond as a spirit gate?” Elsier asked.
“The ritual just said a body of water,” Meredith said, sounding defensive.
She reached the edge of the pond and grabbed two handfuls of thick grass to help pull herself out onto the bank.
Elsier rippled his physical form, shedding dirt and moisture, before stepping up onto the surface of the water. He’d never consumed beast or elemental cores, and he’d certainly never eaten a human soul, so there was little in the way of physical weight to pull him under the surface.
He walked across the water to the edge, where he hopped lightly up onto the bank.
“Can you help me out?” Meredith asked.
“I’m sure I could,” Elsier said.
Meredith sighed, then said, “Help me out of the water, Elsier.”
Elsier reached down to grab the girl’s forearm and hauled her out. His body didn't have the strength of steel, but even starlight energy could take a tangible form if it were dense enough.
He felt the minute flow of lucent power arrive in the onyx ring as her feet landed on the ground beside him.
She assessed her clothes, looking down at them with distaste.
“Can you…” she began to ask, before hesitating, then changing the question into a command. “Elsier, help me to get dry.”
Elsier stared at her for a second. How exactly was she expecting him to do that?
He made a show of reaching into an inner pocket of his robe, where he expressed an embroidered cotton handkerchief. He pulled it out and offered it to her.
She stared at it, unamused. “I meant more directly.”
Elsier thought for a second, then reached into his robe pocket and expressed a fan. He drew it out, flicked it open, and used it to waft air at her, drying her clothes marginally more quickly than doing nothing would provide. This time, no trickle of lucent energy came from the girl.
“Elsier!” she snapped.
Elsier snapped the fan closed and let it dissolve. “I’m a spirit, not a mage. I don’t know how to dry a mortal. Should we start a fire?”
Privately, Elsier knew exactly how useless he was being. But he really couldn’t do anything to help.
He didn’t have any elemental affinities. If he’d been raised on water cores, maybe he could have just drawn the water out of her clothes with a wave of his hand. If he’d been fed on fire cores, perhaps he could have baked her dry. But he’d only ever absorbed pure starlight, the basic energy of spirits.
Starlight didn’t lock his form down like other sources of energy, but it didn’t have many direct applications. It was the energy of the mistaken shadow and the guiding light. It couldn't dry a mortal.
Meredith turned and began striding off through the long grass.
Faced with a choice between her company and remaining with the goats and fetid pond, Elsier reluctantly followed.
So far the mortal world had been exactly what he expected; dull and uncomfortable. At least he hadn't been immediately beset by murderous bandits or terrifying wild spirits as he'd feared. The stories told by visitors to Cradle Mountain Peak had made the mortal realm seem a lot more dangerous.
He also felt like he was succeeding in his aim of being as unhelpful as possible. If he could keep this up, there was no way that the mage would want to renew his contract. In one month, he'd be free to do what he wanted.
The pond turned out to be at the edge of a fenced smallholding, with a pen for goats, a stack of firewood, and a tidy garden showing neat rows of vegetables.
A structure stood in the middle of the plot, a building with walls that were dry stone for the first couple of feet, before turning into wooden planks that reached up to the eaves. The roof was topped with turf, with long grass overgrowing and hanging down in front of mottled glass windows.
Nothing was gilded or wrapped in silver wire. The structure’s windows weren’t set with cut crystal or dressed with silk, the door wasn’t brass-studded cherrywood or intricate wrought iron. It didn’t even look draft-proof.
After seeing how Meredith dressed, he wasn’t surprised to see this was where she lived. It had its own kind of charm, but if she hadn’t just dragged him away from his own home, with its damask drapes and cloud spirit beds, he might have felt sorry for her.
One month, and I’m free.
“That’s an impressive shed—oh it’s a house,” Elsier said.
“Shut up Elsier,” Meredith said.
“No,” Elsier replied.
He immediately felt a minute amount of power drain away from him via his ring, sucked out like he’d been bitten by a starlight-drinking mosquito. This was his forfeit for refusing an order.
At least it’d only been a tiny sacrifice, for refusing a tiny order.
Meredith reached the door, pressed the latch, and stepped inside. Elsier came up behind her, peering through the doorway into the gloom inside.
It was a small house. A single room, with a flagstone floor and a low loft running its length.
One end was set up as the living area. A fireplace connected to a stone chimney, with pots and clay vessels scattered around the hearth. A pair of wooden stools sat on either side of a low table, which was set with a copper kettle and a white clay tea set. The far wall had a row of hooks holding a number of black iron utensils, and there was a bundle of cleaning and gardening tools leaning against the wall in the corner.
The other end of the tiny house was a combination of bedroom and library, but only in the sense that every square inch of surface that wasn’t the bed was piled high with books and scrolls.
Elsier only had a vague idea about commerce outside the realm of Cradle Mountain Peak, but he wouldn’t be surprised if the total value of the books was higher than of the house itself. They were undoubtedly worth more than four agate beast cores.
Meredith grabbed a short wooden staff from the bundle of brooms in the corner and brought it into the middle of the room.
The staff was made from a slender sapling, as thick as two thumbs put together, with a lump at the top where the trunk diverged and knotted around itself.
Still carrying her black drawstring pouch, Meredith loosened the cord and tipped the contents out onto the kitchen table.
As well as the agate beast core she'd refused to part with at Cradle Mountain Peak, there were six turquoise beast cores, two opal beast cores, and one each of fire, earth, and storm elemental cores.
The elemental cores were small, but any one of them was worth more than all the rest of the beast cores put together.
The poor peasant persona she'd presented to the concierge had been an act.
"You cheated us!" Elsier said. “There’s vastly more than four agate cores in there.”
"I haggled," Meredith countered.
"But you lied. You committed a fraud!"
"I don't actually see why you care."
As she spoke, Meredith picked the faintly glowing elemental cores from the pile and slotted them into gaps in the head of her staff, which seemed to welcome them.
Elsier thought about it and realized she was right.
"Well, I don't."
He begrudged every wisp of energy that the court had accepted for him. It only annoyed him because it implied he was only worth four agate cores.
"That's what I thought," Meredith said.
She walked over to the hearth and placed the head of her staff against the stacked wood in the fireplace. A second later, the wood began to smolder and quickly burst into flames.
So she is a mage, after all.
The girl obviously had enough control over her lucent energy that she could channel it through the elemental cores to change its nature and achieve elemental effects.
It wasn’t something even Elsier could do. Lucent energy was uniquely suited to change aspects, and it was the sole province of mortals. He’d need to eat a particularly juicy human soul to have enough of it to become a mage—or use the payments of energy accruing in his ring, he supposed.
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He pushed his senses towards the ring, weighing its contents. There were only a few wisps of lucent energy in there so far, barely a thimble full. Enough to light a spark, perhaps, if he could channel it properly.
“Go wait outside, now, Elsier,” Meredith said, bringing a large tin basin down from the crawlspace in the roof. “I need to get clean.”
“By your command,” Elsier said, saluting with his palms pressed together, before opening the door and stepping back outside.
Another burst of lucent energy flowed into the ring. More than he’d expected. She must have really wanted him to leave.
Outside, Elsier wandered around the outskirts of the smallholding. He tried to annoy the goats by poking them with a stick, only to find that they were quite placid. He tried to sip at what faint starlight energy made it through the clouds and afternoon sun, but with so much solar energy flooding the sky, it was a useless endeavor.
He even contemplated taking a drink of the solar energy. After all, he was in the mortal world now, why shouldn’t he sample the different flavors on offer? He rejected the idea, in the end. He was too attached to his fluidity, and didn’t want to color himself with even a drop of sunlight.
Solar energy was ubiquitous during the day, and Elsier had seen his share of solar warriors from the auctions at Cradle Mountain Peak, but that kind of brash power didn’t appeal to him.
Taking stock of the energy around him, he noticed faint fetid energy wafting off the small pond like a stench. He wondered if Meredith ever accumulated from it.
☆
Meredith emerged from the cottage almost an hour later. Her ebony hair was clean, tied in a braid she’d brought forward to hang down in front of her shoulder. She was dressed quite differently to her outfit at Cradle Mountain Peak as well.
Instead of the homespun robe, she wore black pants and a white shirt, with a hooded overcoat of oilcloth belted around her waist. A dagger sheath hung from her belt, and she carried her staff like a badge of office, the knot of wood at the top glowing faintly with its embedded elemental cores.
Even her face seemed different. Her expression was harder, less open, more difficult to read. In this setting, in those clothes, she seemed leaner than she had in the spirit realm. A severe woman living through hard times. He’d only seen a flash of this girl before, when the concierge had left him alone with her at the auction.
“Elsier, come with me. We’re going to the village.”
Meredith was already walking away from the cottage, along a dirt track that led to the treeline.
Not particularly wanting to remain at the small farm, Elsier started after her. The mage didn’t check to see if he was following.
She can probably tell from the pairing bond.
Outside the spirit realm, the bond was weaker. It didn’t convey so much of the girl’s emotions, and likewise, probably wouldn’t reveal as much of his. There were still vague impressions, he doubted that the girl would be able to lie to him without him seeing through it, but he wasn’t so painfully aware of the contents of her heart.
The sense of Meredith’s presence and well-being through the bond was undiminished. It was probably a vital part of his contract with her.
Meredith was getting away, so Elsier picked up his pace, quickly catching up.
“What village are we going to?” he asked.
“Winewater Village. My adopted home," she said. "The mayor and militia captain are waiting for you. We’re late because I had to clean myself up. I thought the trip through the pond would be more ethereal and less dirty.”
“No, your body more or less sits and stews in the water you use,” Elsier said, trying not to sound too cheerful. His mind caught up with the rest of her statement a second later. “Why are they waiting for me?”
“Because we’re hoping you will be the answer to our problems.”
That didn’t sound right at all. He was a young prince who’d devoted his education to being too useless for a mortal accumulator to bother with. He wasn’t the solution to anyone’s problems.
“Do your problems revolve around extreme monotony? I could probably help with that.”
Meredith’s voice was grim as she replied. “No. They revolve around sixty or so military deserters who rob us and kill us.”
“Oh.”
Elsier was fairly certain he had no way to help with that, but he decided if Meredith had been open to that fact then she wouldn’t have bartered for his contract at Cradle Mountain Peak. He hadn’t exactly been the most physically imposing spirit in the plaza.
“Why did you single me out, when you were looking for a spirit contract?” he asked as they walked.
Meredith glanced at him before answering. “Your robe.”
“My robe? You liked that?”
“No, it was offensive. But I saw it and I thought, there’s a spirit they’re probably desperate to be rid of.”
“Oh.”
Being as annoying as possible had served him well for four pairing days. No visitor to the spirit realm would touch him. He'd failed to realize that a contract that went unsold for too long would simply be let go at a steep discount.
☆
About half an hour into their journey, Meredith slowed to a stop.
Elsier didn’t need to ask why. He could hear the same thing she had. Two mortals were creeping through the woods around them.
They were trying to be silent, but their clumsy corporeal feet were crushing leaves and twigs, while their human hands pushed branches out of their way. He could hear their breathing, heavy and wet. Even if he hadn’t heard them, their sour odor was riding ahead of them like a herald.
“Are those two mortals your friends?” he asked Meredith quietly.
“There’s two of them?” she asked, then let out a long sigh. “No. They’re not our friends.”
The two mortals reached the edge of the road ahead of them and burst out of the undergrowth, leaping into view, apparently proud of their efforts at subterfuge.
Both men had animalistic qualities. The one on the left had teeth like a wolf’s, with shaggy gray hair that ran from his head down his back. Elsier could see it spilling from his collar and at the back of his shirt. The other had scaled cheeks, and pupils that were just vertical slits.
Both had clearly been using beast cores.
When a spirit fed on beast cores, they incorporated the beast's animal energy into their body, gaining the understanding needed to adopt that animal's form as well as carrying animal features even while in human form.
For a mortal to consume a beast core would mean uncontrolled mutation. Their bodies would change, and they would begin to hear the inner voice of the spirit animal they'd fed from.
A cadre of bear knights had been regular visitors to Cradle Mountain Peak. They'd always been friendly enough, but Elsier had heard that sometimes the animal voice was so strong they found themselves sleeping clear through the winter.
For a mortal, consuming beast cores could be a path to great strength and ferocity in combat, but it would always mark them, and any mortal with less-than-perfect willpower would always be at risk of succumbing to the influence of their animal voice.
“Lost little girl,” the man with wolf teeth said, speaking awkwardly around the mouth of sharp fangs. "What are you doing living all the way out here? Dangerous."
Both men were armed with short swords and armored in steel breastplates that had seen better days. It was clear to Elsier that living away from the village was primarily dangerous because of them.
"I wouldn't know, I'm the most dangerous thing for eighty miles," Meredith said, gripping her staff in both hands.
The man with lizard features began hissing in laughter. He’d obviously taken it as an idle boast. Elsier wasn’t sure he was wrong.
"Is that right," the wolf warrior said.
Meredith half turned toward Elsier and whispered, "I need a minute to focus. Distract them."
The man with lizard features waved his sword, using it to point at Elsier and then Meredith.
“We’ll take that fancy robe of yours, boy, before we have to get your blood on it. And you, hand over that pouch."
How do I distract them? Elsier wondered.
Unsure how to complete the order, he decided to just treat them as pairing day customers.
He altered the embroidery on the back of his robe to be one of the more choice gestures from his repertoire and turned around slowly to reveal the design to the two men.
“You want me to hand over this robe?”
The man with lizard features turned his head and spat on the ground before going on. “Take it off and toss it here, before we gut you and ruin it for the both of us.”
Elsier turned back around to face the two men, then reached down and started removing the robe. He spent as long as he plausibly could pulling it off, revealing an identical robe underneath. He bundled up the spirit-stuff fabric and tossed it to the ground.
“Wait, that’s the witch—” the man with wolf features started, but he didn’t get a chance to finish.
A stream of liquid fire erupted from the tip of Meredith's staff, spitting out twenty feet and engulfing the man from head to hips.
The bandit didn't even get a chance to scream. His flesh charred to charcoal in a second and his body fell quietly to the dirt road.
Elsier stared at the body, stricken. He’d never seen a mortal die before. It was so ugly.
“Can you catch his soul before it fades?” Meredith asked hoarsely, training her staff on the other man, who was frozen looking down at the other bandit.
“I could," Elsier admitted. He tried to focus, forcing himself to glance at her. "But, I don’t want to."
“It wouldn’t be a source of power for you?”
“It would. But it would change me as well. Unless you want me to have some of his personality, I wouldn’t suggest ordering it.”
The other man had gotten over his shock and was sprinting at the pair of them, his short sword held out to the side. His forked tongue lolled from his mouth as he ran, tasting the air as a feral light glinted in his eyes.
Meredith spoke to Elsier quietly. “I can only manage one flame blast. Protect me.”
A swell of lucent energy came with the order, larger than usual. Meredith’s desire to survive weighed itself against Elsier’s fear of violence. The woman’s survival instinct put his fear in the shadows. This order would be profitable to follow, and expensive to refuse.
Elsier had never fought a mortal before, never mind killed one, but there was enough wiggle room in Meredith’s command that he wouldn’t have to cross that line today.
He moved quickly, putting himself between the charging bandit and the mage.
He was light, made of condensed stellar energy, while the man was a slow being of flesh and bone. As the man came within speaking distance, Elsier leaped forward, throwing himself at the man’s legs.
At the moment of impact, Elsier became a net of white silk ropes, tangling around the man’s ankles and pulling him face-first into the dirt.
The bandit crashed into the road, cracking his nose on the ground and scraping skin from his forehead. He grunted, then started struggling.
Such a fall wouldn’t be enough to disable a beast warrior, and the starlight matter of Elsier’s body wouldn’t hold up to the man’s superhuman strength for long.
Just as Elsier felt like he was being torn apart, he released the form. The white ropes unraveled into his robe. He fell backwards, letting himself roll hips over head before springing back to his feet.
The lizard-aspect bandit recovered almost as quickly as Elsier, springing lithely to his feet and lunging at him with the sword.
The tip of the blade stabbed into Elsier’s chest, where a mortal’s heart would be.
A flash of pain lanced out through his body. Elsier staggered backward, his hand pressed to his chest. It wasn’t that he’d never experienced pain, but nobody had tried to kill him before The bandit had struck with the intent to kill, and a fragment of Elsier’s existence had been chipped away.
The bandit swung again, this time in a horizontal slash. Elsier let himself flow out of the way of it, his starlight body shifting and bending in ways no solid body could, moving himself out of the way. He dodged two more swings, before he noticed Meredith standing behind the man.
She stepped up, raising her staff above her head, and brought it down on the back of the bandit’s skull, striking as if she were dashing a snake against a rock.
Elsier felt a flash of elemental earth as the head of the staff struck, as loud and hot as a falling boulder.
The bandit froze in place. His eyes rolled upwards, and he slumped to the ground. Blood ran out across the road like wine spilled from a cup.
Elsier coaxed his body back into solidity, glancing around for any other threats before focusing on the scene in front of him.
When he caught sight of the bandit’s wound, he knew that the man was dead beyond doubt.
As they stood there, a wisp of misty energy escaped the bandit’s mouth. His soul, drifting out and dispersing like a final breath. Uncontained and undefined, it would spread out, joining the anonymous energy of the world.
They were lucky he hadn’t been a strong accumulator, or his dying soul might have burst free from his body to avenge his own life. That probably wasn't the province of anyone living out here in the woods. At least, Elsier hoped not.
Meredith finished wiping the head of her staff on the grass and bent down to pick up Elsier’s discarded robe.
She held the garment out to him. “Come on. It’s already going to be dark before we get there.”
Meredith left the scene, continuing down the road.
Eslier stood still for a moment, staring at the corpses they’d left behind.
So this is how it is in the mortal realm.
He turned and followed after Meredith, feeling another thread of lucent energy trickling into the ring on his hand.